Polls show that Moreno is poised for a landslide victory in referendum election

Public opinion polls are in agreement. Only two weeks before Ecuadorian voters go to the polls, President Lenin appears headed for a big victory on all seven of his referendum questions.

President Lenin Moreno is still riding high.

On Thursday, the polling group Cedatos released its latest results showing that 74 percent of voters support the president’s “yes” position on the referendum questions. Results vary by question, with 84 percent saying they will vote to prohibit officials convicted of corruption from running for public office and 71 percent saying they will vote to end the indefinite reelection of some public officials, including the president.

“The Cedatos results correlate closely with the other polls and show that Moreno will get huge win February 4,” says University of San Francsico, Quito, history professor Fernando Ruiz. “The election is essentially in the bag for the president,” he added.

The campaign of former president Rafael Correa for a “no” vote has had virtually no impact, Ruiz says. “The needle hasn’t moved since he came back to the country and it’s possible that he has even helped the ‘yes’ side,” Ruiz says. “Yesterday’s court order that he (Correa) testify in the bribery trial of one of his cabinet members could not have come at a worse time. In the minds of most voters, it simply reinforces Coorea’s connection to corruption.”

The Cedatos poll contained one sharp rebuke to the Moreno administration, however, as respondents overwhelming disapproved of the government’s decision to grant citizenship to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. More than 62 percent disagreed to the move with another 22 percent saying they did not have an opinion.

While support of Moreno’s presidency remained strong, it dropped from 70.9 percent in early December 2017 to 68.6 percent in mid-January.