- February 15, 2025
Ecuador will become a big headache for U.S. if leftist party wins runoff election
Most polls had predicted that center-right president Daniel Noboa, 37, the scion of one of the country’s richest families, would win by a comfortable margin, if not clinch his re-election victory in the first round vote. But Noboa got 44.2% of the vote, ending in a technical tie with Correa-backed leftist candidate Luisa Gonzalez, who got 43.9%.
The third-placed candidate, Leonidas Iza, of the leftist indigenous Pachakutik party, got 5.3%, with the remainder divided among other minor candidates. Pachakutik voters will now play a key role in deciding who wins the runoff vote.
There is a lot at stake for the Trump administration and Latin American countries in Ecuador’s election, because a return of Correa’s party would almost certainly shift the country sharply to the left. Gonzalez is an ultraloyal Correa follower.
“She is in tune with the socialism of the 21st century movement,” former Ecuadoran president Jamil Mahuad told me, referring to the Venezuela and Cuba-led group of leftist Latin American countries. She would most likely be an ally of the BRICS bloc of nations led by China and Russia, he added.
Correa was president of Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, and fled the country after being sentenced to eight years in prison on corruption charges. He has been a fierce foe of the United States since his childhood, when his father spent three years in a U.S. prison on charges of drug trafficking.
As president, Correa closed down the U.S. anti-narcotics base of Manta and passed a “universal citizenship” law that critics say allowed many Colombian and Albanian organized crime leaders to establish themselves in the country.
Santiago Basabe, a political scientist who teaches at the San Francisco University of Quito, told me that Correa-backed candidate Gonzalez has the best chance of winning the runoff election. That’s because Noboa and Gonzalez together grabbed nearly 90% of the vote in the first round, and the third-placed leftist Pachakutik party is likely to back Gonzalez.
“There is only about 10% of the vote up for grabs, and the leftist indigenous Pachakutik party got more than 5% of it in the first round,” Basabe told me. “Most likely, a good percentage of those leftist indigenous votes will go for Gonzalez in the second round.”
Jaime Durán Barba, an Ecuadoran political consultant and pollster who is close to Noboa, told me he was surprised by the first round election result because virtually all polls suggested a wider lead by Noboa. But Duran Barba said he still believes Noboa will win re-election, because Pachakutik voters are not a monolithic bloc.
“[Pachakutik leader] Leonidas Iza is a leftist, but his indigenous followers don’t think in Western ideological terms of “left” or “right.” They think in terms of their cultural identity,” Duran Barba added. “And they have traditionally voted against Correa, because Correa has done things to them that they don’t like.”
Noboa’s big challenge over the next two months will be to crack down on drug-related violence — which is Ecuadoreans’ top priority — and alleviating the country’s energy crisis. Ecuador recorded a record level of homicides in January.
To regain his footing, Noboa will have to court indigenous voters, carry out some spectacular actions to crack down on violence, and get all the diplomatic support he can from the Trump administration and friendly Latin American countries.
Unless the president moves fast, Correa’s candidate has a good chance of winning. Many Ecuadorans have fond memories of Correa’s presidency during a boom in world oil prices that brought about an economic bonanza in Ecuador.
But they forget that Correa misspent most of the country’s income in a corrupt authoritarian experiment that attracted drug lords and organized crime gangs. If Correa’s candidate wins, Ecuador will become a new headache for Washington, and for the region.