Noboa’s support was holding at 55.65% early today, the level at which it remained for nearly the entire count.

Gonzalez has 44.35% support.

Noboa and electoral authorities said yesterday he had roundly won the contest, leading by more than 1 million votes in a surprising sweep after a tight February first round, when he finished ahead by just over 16,700 votes.

Gonzalez told supporters yesterday she did not accept the results, which she called a “grotesque” fraud, and that she would demand a recount.

But she offered no details of her recount demand, nor did she immediately call for protests.

Candidates can contest results under some conditions after the official count closes.

As of this morning, just 1.25% of ballot boxes remained to be counted and only 1.71% registered some kind of irregularity.

Noboa, Gonzalez and her mentor, former president Rafael Correa, had all warned of the potential for fraud ahead of the vote.

In the second round, each candidate had some 45,000 observers from their parties at polling places, a major uptick for Noboa, who had few observers in the first round.

Though Correa and Gonzalez’s party, Citizens’ Revolution (RC), doubled down on fraud allegations in a statement today, influential party members were individually recognising Noboa’s victory.

“If the people elected him, we must respect it. Whether we like it or not, the people voted democratically and we must be honest and recognise it,” Aquiles Alvarez, the RC mayor of Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil, said on X.

“The worst is to be a bad loser.”

“The Ecuadorean people have expressed themselves at the ballot box. We wish the re-elected President Daniel Noboa the greatest success,” said Leonardo Orlando, the prefect of Manabi province, an RC stronghold, on social media.

Ecuador’s international bonds rose between 12 and 15 cents each in price today on Noboa’s victory.

Security and economy

Noboa focused his second round campaign on the populous coastal provinces, which have suffered significant violence and where he roundly lost in the first round, repeatedly visiting the area alongside his wife and mother.

Economic handouts and support for flood victims on the coast buoyed Noboa’s vote, said Cristian Carpio, a professor of politics from the University of the Americas in Quito, as did voter fear over a return of Correa’s socialist policies.

Correa, who was president for a decade until 2017, was convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison in a 2020 decision he attributed to political persecution.

He has lived in Belgium since he left office.

RC members had floated the creation of a digital currency for the country, which uses the US dollar as its official currency, and Gonzalez had said she would send thousands of peace advisors to violent neighbourhoods.

Both ideas seem to have cost her with voters fed up with crime and weary of anything that might harm the economy.

Murders, gun smuggling, fuel theft, extortion and other crimes carried out by local criminal groups allied with Mexican cartels and the Albanian mafia have spiked over the last five years in Ecuador.

Meanwhile, the economy has struggled to recover post-pandemic and unemployment has risen.

Noboa has been in office for just over 16 months, after beating Gonzalez in the 2023 race to serve out the remainder of his predecessor’s mandate.

He has pledged to continue measures including military deployments, job creation, more seizures of drugs and guns, an increase in tax revenues and efforts to attract more private investment to the oil sector during his full term.

Noboa says his work has already paid dividends, including a 15% reduction in violent deaths last year and potential 4% economic growth this year.

The president will need to show progress to keep popular support, professor Carpio said, and manage a divided national assembly, where his National Democratic Action Party has one fewer seat – 66 – than RC.

Neither party has a majority.

“(Noboa) will have to build bridges, the government needs urgently to improve the perception of security,” Carpio said.

“Economic management will be key. Ecuador must recover and the government must work on investment, public spending and the electricity provision issue.”

The victory is not a blank cheque, Noboa’s minister of government Jose de la Gasca told television channel Teleamazonas: “this means we enter a phase of national reconciliation.”

Noboa’s mother, Annabella Azin, won a legislature seat with more votes than any other candidate and could be elected the body’s president.

Noboa’s full term will begin in May.

A state of emergency declared by Noboa for security reasons one day before the election restricts mass gatherings in Quito, among other places, for 60 days.

Noboa’s win was consistent with what Organization of American States officials observed during voting, Luis Almagro, the body’s secretary-general, said on X.