Meanwhile, in Ecuador …
On Sunday, Ecuadorians voted.
Andrés Arauz is the candidate of the correístas, the followers of that notorious ex-president, Rafael Correa. Arauz received the most votes of all the candidates, but not enough to win outright. A runoff election on April 11 will determine who becomes the new president.
Arauz’s opponent – Sunday’s runner-up – is TBD.
There are two contenders. One is Yaku Pérez, of Pachakutik (the indigenist party). The other is the 2017 runner-up, the banker Guillermo Lasso, who trails Pérez by less than one percentage point.
(Only the top two vote-getters will qualify for the next round. The rules are explained here.)
El Universo’s map of results shows the election playing out along ethnic lines. Pérez leads in virtually every province that has a large percentage of indigenous voters. Elsewhere, Arauz leads. Lasso is ahead only in Pichincha (the capital) and in sparsely populated Galápagos.
(Votes, not provinces, are what matter. Looking at provinces just helps us to understand regional and demographic trends.)
My hunch is that if Lasso were edged out, his supporters wouldn’t turn to Pérez in large enough numbers for Pérez to surge past Arauz in the next round (though Lasso himself would endorse Pérez over Arauz). Similarly, should Pérez fail to qualify for the runoff, his voters wouldn’t likely favor Lasso enough for Arauz to be defeated.
I have left thirty percent of the voters unaccounted for: those who didn’t choose any of the top three candidates. There is reason to think that those favoring Xavier Hervas, the next highest vote-getter, would migrate to Pérez (Hervas’s fellow lefty). Even so, I believe that Arauz will win in the second round.
I’m not at all optimistic about the correístas’ ability to govern. In the past, they have practiced gross patronage. Their economic strategy has been to take oil from indigenous peoples’ lands in order to pay for handouts and public works (and white elephants).
Anti-correístas, though, are in the curious position of having to promote aspects of both the free-market agenda (Lasso’s) and the ecologically-minded, “plurinationalist” agenda (Pérez’s) over that of Arauz, who is arguably the centrist among the three candidates. This is because any joint effort to defeat the correístas will have to bring opposite sides together.
Meanwhile, the international press seems not to have as much to say as in 2017. My mother did send this rather bizarre story from The Guardian detailing the connections between a smear campaign, birdsong, and Colombian guerrilleros. And this report from CNN gives a sense of the appeal of Pérez, the election’s dark horse.
Andrés Arauz is the candidate of the correístas, the followers of that notorious ex-president, Rafael Correa. Arauz received the most votes of all the candidates, but not enough to win outright. A runoff election on April 11 will determine who becomes the new president.
Arauz’s opponent – Sunday’s runner-up – is TBD.
There are two contenders. One is Yaku Pérez, of Pachakutik (the indigenist party). The other is the 2017 runner-up, the banker Guillermo Lasso, who trails Pérez by less than one percentage point.
(Only the top two vote-getters will qualify for the next round. The rules are explained here.)
El Universo’s map of results shows the election playing out along ethnic lines. Pérez leads in virtually every province that has a large percentage of indigenous voters. Elsewhere, Arauz leads. Lasso is ahead only in Pichincha (the capital) and in sparsely populated Galápagos.
(Votes, not provinces, are what matter. Looking at provinces just helps us to understand regional and demographic trends.)
My hunch is that if Lasso were edged out, his supporters wouldn’t turn to Pérez in large enough numbers for Pérez to surge past Arauz in the next round (though Lasso himself would endorse Pérez over Arauz). Similarly, should Pérez fail to qualify for the runoff, his voters wouldn’t likely favor Lasso enough for Arauz to be defeated.
I have left thirty percent of the voters unaccounted for: those who didn’t choose any of the top three candidates. There is reason to think that those favoring Xavier Hervas, the next highest vote-getter, would migrate to Pérez (Hervas’s fellow lefty). Even so, I believe that Arauz will win in the second round.
I’m not at all optimistic about the correístas’ ability to govern. In the past, they have practiced gross patronage. Their economic strategy has been to take oil from indigenous peoples’ lands in order to pay for handouts and public works (and white elephants).
Anti-correístas, though, are in the curious position of having to promote aspects of both the free-market agenda (Lasso’s) and the ecologically-minded, “plurinationalist” agenda (Pérez’s) over that of Arauz, who is arguably the centrist among the three candidates. This is because any joint effort to defeat the correístas will have to bring opposite sides together.
Meanwhile, the international press seems not to have as much to say as in 2017. My mother did send this rather bizarre story from The Guardian detailing the connections between a smear campaign, birdsong, and Colombian guerrilleros. And this report from CNN gives a sense of the appeal of Pérez, the election’s dark horse.
