Ecuadorians will head to the polls on Sunday in a runoff presidential election, choosing between a conservative incumbent or a leftist lawyer as the country struggles with a cocaine-fueled security crisis.
President Daniel Noboa is vying for a full four years in office after winning a special election in 2023 to complete his predecessor’s term. He will be running against Luisa González, the protégé of Ecuador’s left-wing former President Rafael Correa.
The first round of voting in February ended with a near tie between both candidates. Whoever wins Sunday’s vote will have to steward a country suffering under surging violence and organized crime.
Here’s what you should know:
An unending crimewave
Once an island of peace in an otherwise turbulent region, the surging drug trade in recent years has caused Ecuador to have the highest homicide rate in Latin America in 2023, according to InSight Crime.
The rate dropped slightly in 2024, but the violence continues as criminal groups have adapted and fragmented in the wake of a government crackdown.
Noboa has sought to quell the problem with force, adopting a “mano dura,” or firm-handed, approach to fighting crime.
Soon after Noboa took office in 2023, the country suffered back-to-back emergencies: a notorious gang leader escaped from prison; days later, a band of gunmen stormed a major TV station and took the staff hostage.
To stamp out the crime wave, Noboa has openly solicited the help of foreign governments and companies, especially from the United States. In March, Noboa raised eyebrows when he announced a “strategic alliance” to fight organized crime with Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial private defense contractor formerly known as Blackwater.
The presence of the US in Ecuador is a point of contention between Noboa and González, who opposes foreign intervention in the country’s security issues.
Along with the crime wave, Ecuadoreans are struggling with a battered economy. Isabel Chiriboga, a Latin America expert at the non-partisan think tank Atlantic Council, wrote in February that the next president will have to steward an economy “teetering on the brink of collapse.”
A hardline approach to crime
Noboa, the American-born, Harvard-educated son of one of Ecuador’s richest businessmen, became president after a surprise victory in 2023, where he beat González in the second round.
Throughout his first term, critics say Noboa has violated political norms, shocking Latin America when he ordered security forces to storm the Mexican embassy to arrest Jorge Glas, a former vice president under Correa accused of corruption. The breach of diplomatic protocol led Mexico to break off relations with Ecuador.
“Noboa thinks that he can govern like he managed his companies,” said Jean Paul Pinto, an Ecuadorean political analyst based in Quito. “He thinks that in the same way that he gives orders inside his companies, he can do the same with the state. And that’s not true.”
Noboa has strained against the legal limits of his office, initiating and winning a referendum to expand his security powers in April 2024. A key part of his security strategy was deploying the military to Ecuador’s prisons, which criminal groups in the country have controlled for years with virtual impunity.
Critics say the president’s approach is brutal, with little to show for it. “We have seen no sign that (Noboa) has a long-term plan,” said James Bargent, a journalist at InSight Crime who has studied Ecuador’s prison crisis.
“What we’ve seen over the last year is just using force on its own is not effective. It’s not broken this cycle of violence,” Bargent concluded.
As to the economy, Noboa has leaned heavily into economic proposals like cash payments and debt forgiveness for farmers affected by natural disasters.
“Now you’re seeing (Noboa) really engaged in some tactics usually more associated with the populist left,” said Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s classic economic populism.”
A former president’s protégé
González has grounded her campaign to “Revitalize Ecuador,” centering a return to the high social spending of Correa’s presidency.
Under González, “we’ll have more social policies for the poorest people in Ecuador,” predicted Pinto. “In the time of Correa, we had a strong state, with a lot of ministers.”
A charismatic socialist now in exile in Belgium, Correa remains a popular figure in Ecuador’s politics despite allegations of corruption during his presidency. In 2020, an Ecuadorean court sentenced the former president to eight years in prison for bribery in absentia, a charge he has repeatedly denied.
“I’m the president of my party,” González said, “I’m the one leading my campaign – it’s my government plan, and my plans for the public. So who will rule? It’ll be Luisa (González).”
The country has seen several nationwide power cuts linked to the El Niño phenomenon drying up rivers that fuel its hydroelectric power plants. In response, González has called for greater government intervention in Ecuador’s power grid.
As for the country’s biggest political issue, a González government may take a more diplomatic approach to dealing with the gangs, Pinto said. “Luisa is going to make a preventative effort,” Pinto said. “I think that she’s going to negotiate with criminal groups to obtain a more peaceful country.”
González has publicly denied that she would negotiate with criminals. Her party’s plan states her government would strive to create a “new model” of security based on “prevention, violence reduction and coexistence.”
The leftist politician is completely against bringing in muscle from abroad to tackle Ecuador’s crime crisis, and has proposed reestablishing the Ecuadorean Ministry of Justice, which was dismantled in 2018. She’s also set on eliminating the agency that manages the country’s dysfunctional prisons.
Freeman, however, thinks that González may be just as hardline as Noboa, pointing to her mentor’s tenure in office.
“Correa was almost a proto-Bukele,” Freeman pointed out, referring to the authoritarian president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. “He (Correa) doubled the prison population. He built massive, massive prisons around the country and filled them with petty criminals. I think that it could be pretty mano dura under González as well, even if she’s not saying that.”
A possible fight ahead
After the election moved to a runoff in February, both candidates claimed, without evidence, that the vote was possibly fraudulent. Freeman and Pinto both worry that without a significant-enough margin of victory, there’s a possibility that neither candidate will concede.
“If Luisa loses on Sunday, there are going to be a lot of strikes,” Pinto said. “Especially in the coastal cities” where González’s supporters are concentrated.
“Noboa has said, ‘I will only concede if there are no signs of fraud,’” said Freeman. “He did even say during the first round that he thought there was fraud. It sort of feels like he’s rhetorically preparing the ground not to concede in the case of a very close outcome.”