Ecuador Reelects Trump-Friendly Daniel Noboa President

President of Ecuador Daniel Noboa was reelected for a four-year term in a runoff election on Sunday, defeating establishment socialist candidate Luisa González with a more than 11-point lead.

Sunday’s election – which local pollsters and media declared too close to call in the days leading up to it as the candidates were “virtually tied” following an extremely close first round – concluded with the reelection of Noboa.

The 37-year-old outsider and Ecuador’s youngest-ever president – who initially campaigned as a climate conscious center-leftist and has since refocused his efforts against organized crime – won what local media is reporting as the biggest landslide since Ecuador’s return to democracy on 1979. Noboa was a relative ideological unknown when he first ran for president, winning in a special election fraught with violence in which frontrunner Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated following a crowded campaign event in 2023.

Noboa has prioritized fighting criminal gangs and, in the process, improved relations with the United States. He attended President Donald Trump’s second inauguration and visited the White House in late March, reportedly asking Trump for help to fight crime.

Sunday also marked the second time a president was reelected in Ecuador since the South American nation returned to democracy after socialist former president and fugitive convicted felon Rafael Correa vacated the position in 2017.

Luisa González, who ran as a candidate for Correa’s establishment socialist Citizens’ Revolution party, denounced the results as “the most grotesque electoral fraud of the republic” and announced that she does not recognize her defeat and will demand a recount.

The most recent results published by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council (CNE) at press time indicate that with roughly 97 percent of the votes counted Noboa obtained 55.65 percent of the votes against González’s 44.35 percent. Out of the nation’s over 13.3 million registered voters, CNE detailed that roughly 11.1 million participated in Sunday’s runoff election.

“Democracy is strengthened when the will of the people is respected. Today, that will has been clearly expressed and, above all, respected,” CNE said in a statement published through social media.

“This victory has been historic, a victory of more than 10 points,” Noboa said to his followers and reporters shortly after CNE announced the results. “This victory has been historic, there is no doubt who the winner is.”

“I want to give a special thanks to my mother and my wife for making an unimaginable effort. My mother with a sick husband and my wife with three young children,” he added.

The incumbent president assured his voters that Ecuador has already chosen a different path “and that path will be for our children to live better than us, for future generations to have a fairer, more dignified, more transparent life, a government with more transparent institutions.”

Before retreating to celebrate with his friends and family, Noboa announced that he will return to the capital city of Quito on Monday to continue with his administration’s agenda and announced that his new term, which will begin on May 24, will see changes to his cabinet.

Luisa González, the leftist establishment candidate and Rafael Correa’s protegé, also addressed her followers shortly after CNE announced Noboa’s victory. González assured that neither she nor the Citizens’ Revolution party recognizes Sunday’s results and that they will demand a recount of votes and for the ballot boxes to be opened.

González justified her refusal to acknowledge her defeat on the grounds that she refuses “to believe that there is a people that prefers violence and lies” while her followers chanted “fraud.”

“I denounce before my people, before the media, and before the world, that Ecuador is living a dictatorship, and we are facing the most grotesque electoral fraud in the Republic of Ecuador,” González said.

González reportedly asserted that Noboa may have used the state of exception that Quito and seven other provinces are under to fight violent drug gang crime to “probably … guarantee the most grotesque electoral fraud.” At press time, González has not publicly presented evidence to substantiate her claims.

The socialist candidate reportedly referred to surveys conducted prior to the election and Sunday exit polls that allegedly projected her the winner as justification for her questioning of the results and stressed that “no study showed a difference as shown by the CNE.”

Asked by reporters for comments on González’s refusal to recognize the results and calls for a recount, Noboa said that he “doesn’t have to answer anything there” and that he finds her response “embarrassing.”

“I find it embarrassing that with 11, 12 points of difference you try somehow to question the will of the Ecuadorians. I believe that Ecuadorians have already made their decision, now we have to work from tomorrow,” Noboa said.

Sunday’s runoff election marked the third time Noboa defeated González at the polls, first during the October 2023 snap election and then on the first round of the presidential election in February, an electoral event that featured 16 candidates and in which Noboa narrowly defeated González by a 0.17-percent vote difference.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.