Some polls suggest Noboa will win without a runoff as his numbers improve ahead of February 9 vote

By Mike Richey

Although most political analysts believe President Daniel Noboa and Luisa González will face each other in an April 13 runoff, some polls suggest Noboa could win outright in the February 9 election. In results released Monday, the Ipsos poll gave Noboa 50% to 34% lead over González while the Comunicaliza and Informe Confidencial polls also showed the president closing in on a first-round victory.

As the election campaign draws to a close, some polls indicate President Daniel Noboa could win in the first round.

To win the presidency in the first round, a candidate must receive more than 50% of valid votes, or more than 40% with a 10-point advantage over the second-place candidate.

“All the polls recognized by the CNE [National Electoral Council] show Noboa increasing his lead as the election approaches and a first election victory is certainly not out of the question,” says media commentator and former Comunicaliza poll analyst Milton Dávalos. “The composite of the polls gives him a 7.4% lead over González, which is an impressive recovery from mid-December when his average lead was 1.7%.”

A possible obstacle for a first-round victory, Dávalos says, is the meteoric rise of Andrea González of the Patriotic Society. “Since the debate — which almost everyone says she won — Andrea has gone from a poll average of less than 1% to almost 5%, and she may continue to rise until election day and could take votes away from Noboa,” according to Dávalos. “Although she has no real chance of making the runoff, she has established herself as the anti-Correista candidate and because she was a friend of Fernando Villavicencio and was his running mate in 2022, she has an advantage over other anti-Correista candidates, including Noboa.”

According to political newspaper columnist Juan Carlos Donoso, Noboa benefits from two factors: the end of electric blackouts and voter apathy. “If the drought and blackouts were happening today, I believe Luisa González would win the election despite the antipathy toward the Correistas,” Donoso said. “He handled the energy crisis poorly in terms of his communication with the public and if the rains had not come and filled the reservoirs, that would be the biggest campaign issue going into the election.”

The second big factor in Noboa’s favor, Donoso says, is a general lack of public interest in the election. “We talk about voter apathy in every election, but I have never seen it to the extent it is for this election. Most people would not even go to the polls if it wasn’t required by law,” he says. “In another election, the issues of Noboa’s feud with [Vice President Veronica] Abad and the fact that his anti-crime campaign has shown so little results would be big issues, but not in this election. People don’t seem to care.”

Donoso still believes there will be an April 13 runoff. “I see the popularity surge by the president, but I’m not convinced it’s enough for total victory in two weeks, but it is certainly possible,” he says. “One of the things all of the so-called experts learned in 2022 is that almost anything is possible in Ecuador elections and that it is foolish to make predictions.”

So why has Citizens Revolution’s Luisa González been unable to capitalize on Noboa’s shortcomings? According to Ecuavisa columnist and commentator Simón Zavala, it’s because of the stubborn persistence of anti-Correista sentiment. “This has been inflamed by [Rafael] Correa’s insistence that Luisa recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela and by comments by [Ricardo] Patiño that the number one objective of Citizens Revolution is to bring Correa home and to free Jorge Glas from prison,” Zavala says.

“Luisa realizes that accepting Maduro would cost her votes but she handled the question from interviewers badly and did not respond directly to Correa,” says Zavala. “She tried to modify Patiño’s claim but this only showed the division in the ranks of the Correistas.”