QUITO — With 70% of the votes counted following Sunday’s presidential elections in Ecuador, Luisa González and Daniel Noboa have emerged as the candidates with the largest number of votes, and will pass into the second-round runoff on October 15.
González and Noboa garnered 33.12% and 24.14% of the votes respectively. In third place was Christian Zurita, who replaced Fernando Villavicencio, the candidate who was assassinated on August 9, with 16.32% of the vote, while Jan Topic came in fourth place with 14.62% of the vote.
Zurita said that coming third in the election “is not a defeat, in fact losing in these circumstances is a victory”.
Voting closed at 17:00 hours local time and the national electoral council (CNE) announced the first official results of the count at 19:30 hours.
At 20:50 local time, Daniel Noboa held a press conference in which he thanked his supporters and acknowledged that he had achieved sufficient votes to contest the second round on October 15.
“We are very happy, we are happy that the people have won, the candidate of the youth, of the people who are looking for hope, who are looking for a positive change for the country, has triumphed,” Noboa said. “Starting tomorrow we have to start working again, we have not yet achieved the objective of winning the presidency of the Republic.”
Candidate Otto Sonnenholzner of Alianza Actuemos acknowledged his defeat at 20:30 hours local time.
“We will learn from our mistakes, we will strengthen our virtues and we will always continue, always concerned with contributing and working,” Sonnenholzner said.
For his part, Jan Topic, who some polls also placed him in second place, also acknowledged defeat.
“I accept the election results but not without first highlighting the excellent performance of Daniel Noboa’s campaign this last week,” he stated on Twitter.
These elections took place after President Guillermo Lasso called for early elections on May 17 in the midst of a complex panorama of ungovernability. However, the campaigns were marred by high levels of violence, which reached a peak with the assassination of Villavicencio on August 9.
The result had been foreseen in exit polls by the firm Corpmontpubli, which gave González 32.81% and Noboa 20.46%
Who is Luisa González?
González is a former advisor to ex-president Rafael Correa, and ran on a campaign of highlighting the former president’s decade in power, during which high oil prices and loans from China fueled a popular surge in government spending.
However, despite support for Correa’s disciples, this is the third consecutive time since 2016 that ‘correismo’, as the free-spending but socially conservative movement of González’s mentor is known, failed to win support beyond its core base and win the election in the first round.
Who is Daniel Noboa?
At 35 years of age, Daniel Noboa Azín dreams of achieving what his father was not able to, having unsuccessfully run for president in Ecuador on five occasions.
Born in Guayaquil, Daniel Noboa is a center-right politician who studied business in New York and entered the family banana business. In 2021 he ran in the legislative elections and was elected to the National Assembly, serving until May 2023, when the Assembly was dissolved due to Guillermo Lasso’s decision to call early elections.
