QUITO, Ecuador—Ecuador’s nail-biter election is heading to a runoff after results showed ruling party candidate Lenín Moreno falling just shy of the votes needed to clench a first-round victory, officials said Tuesday.
With nearly 95 percent of all votes officially tallied, the current results are “irreversible,” said Juan Pablo Pozo Bahamonde, president of the National Electoral Council.
The results end two days of suspense as supporters of opposition candidate Guillermo Lasso took to the streets to protest what they said was an attempt at fraud to favor Moreno, President Rafael Correa’s hand-picked successor.
The small Andean country will now hold a second-round of voting on April 2, an election that will remain closely watched in Latin America as Moreno faces off against Lasso, a conservative former banker. The region has shifted right over the last 18 months, as conservative leaders in Argentina, Brazil and Peru have assumed power after the end of a commodities boom that boosted leftists like Correa.
Several losing candidates who shared Lasso’s conservative ideas and fatigue with Correa’s iron-fisted rule have already thrown their support behind Lasso for the second round, including former congresswoman Cynthia Viteri, who finished third with more than 16 percent. Former Quito Mayor Paco Moncayo, the only leftist among the seven trailing candidates, said he wouldn’t ask the 7 percent of voters who backed him to vote for either candidate in the runoff.
