Ecuador Election - First Round Notes - February 2025
The first round was close. The second round will be too.
Ecuador will go to a runoff after the top two candidates - President Daniel Noboa and Luisa Gonzalez - essentially tied each other with about 44% of the vote each. The candidates were separated by about 20,000 votes in the first round. The second round will be a repeat of the 2023 snap election runoff that Noboa won 52-48.
A long time to shake up the race
The runoff is two months away on 13 April. That is time for economics, electricity, gang violence, judicial rulings, or some policy earthquake from the US to shake up this race and move voters. So while the rest of my comments below are directed at the state of the race immediately after the first round, keep in mind that a “March surprise” could await.
The average of the polls was great; the polls were terrible
The aggregate of all the polls wasn’t too far off from the results. That’s great for people who model elections, but that doesn’t tell the full story. There was a group of pro-Gonzalez polls giving her about a 7 point lead and another group of pro-Noboa polls giving him about a 10 point lead. The final Cedatos poll, for example, had the race Noboa 40, Gonzalez 30. Both sides regularly posted graphics suggesting that if you removed the null and blank and undecided votes (always a dangerous assumption that increases error rates), their preferred candidate would win big in the first round. So, while the average of all the polls was close to accurate, the average error rate of the individual polls was generously about 8%, which is far too high, and I could argue it was even worse than that number.
Takeaways for the second round (that apply to all elections): Average all the polls, don’t discount polls that go against your view of the current situation, and treat undecided voters and null votes as adding to the uncertainty rather than ignoring them.
No Congressional Majority
In the 150 seat legislature, Noboa’s ADN took 67 seats and Gonzalez’s RC won 66 seats. The remaining seats are divided among small parties and independent movements. Coalition building in the Congress will be a challenge. Neither candidate will have an easy path toward a clear legislative majority if they win because any defection will harm them. Noboa had certainly hoped for a victory with a clear mandate. Now, even if he wins, he will still struggle to govern.
Iza could be kingmaker in the election and the Congress, but does he want that role?
Leonidas Iza, the head of the Indigenous CONAIE movement, won 5% of the vote. Pachakutik, the political party connected with the indigenous movement, will hold nine seats in the legislature
Iza announced almost immediately after the election that he would not endorse either candidate. This is political stupidity. His leverage will never be greater, and he should be negotiating for a policy agenda that would benefit him and his movement. Iza could still come to some agreement with Gonzalez or Noboa, and he can probably convince most of his supporters with an endorsement. Otherwise, expect his votes to split roughly evenly among the two candidates, though even a small advantage by one candidate among this group could matter in a close race.
Why is Iza resisting an endorsement? Both CONAIE and Rafael Correa’s party are usually described as leftist, but it’s a great example of demonstrating how “left” is not a simple political ideology tag to use. The two sides hate each other. Correa’s statist mining and environmental policies directly clashed with indigenous groups throughout his term in office. Meanwhile, Iza dislikes Noboa and his political agenda. Overall, Iza is a career opposition politician who is better at opposing those in power than he is at joining a side that might win.
The only other person/party with significant influence is Andrea Gonzalez of the PSC. She won just short of 3% of the vote and her party won four seats in the Congress. I expect those to go to Noboa and the ADN.
An uncertain second round
Noboa had a great showing for an incumbent in an anti-incumbent environment given all of Ecuador’s economic, energy, and security problems. Most presidents would be crushed in that situation. Noboa’s advantage is that he is an incredibly skilled politician who understands how to use the advantages of incumbency to dominate the media environment. That, plus the perception that most of Ecuador’s voters reject Rafael Correa, is why the market continues to have him as the favorite.
However, if you take my hypothesis from last year that incumbents aren’t winning close elections, then this runoff favors Gonzalez.
Correa’s preferred candidate has lost each of the past three presidential elections and the blame for that can go directly to how unpopular former President Correa is. Yet, his party did win some big municipal victories a few years ago across the country. Further, the three elections they lost were all against non-incumbents, an advantage for the anti-Correa choice in an anti-incumbent environment.
If Correa is smart, he won’t make a single public comment over the next two months. He should sit quietly in his house in Belgium and play video games. Every word he speaks knocks a few votes off Gonzalez’s final count. She can win if she can portray herself as an independent leader; she loses if she appears to be a puppet of the former president.
I’m torn between the facts that 1) Noboa is a better politician than Gonzalez, but 2) opposition candidates are winning close elections in the current regional political environment.
What I commented to many people prior to the first round was some variation of: Noboa is the slight favorite, but markets are too certain that he will win. Markets are a lot less certain after the first round. They should maintain that uncertainty. This is going to be a close race. Nobody should feel overly confident that one side is guaranteed to win.