Ecuador re-elects law-and-order president amid surging violence

Ecuador’s incumbent president Daniel Noboa, the conservative, tough-on-crime scion of a banana dynasty, resoundingly won his reelection runoff on Sunday, defeating left-wing candidate Luisa González by more than 10 points.

Against the backdrop of an epidemic of gang-violence, the vote was a referendum on Noboa’s no-holds-barred war on drugs, which has been marked by states of emergency, mass arrests, and allegations of human rights violations.

González, who is close to the country’s exiled left-wing populist former president Rafael Correa, ran on a progressive platform that focused on poverty alleviation and reducing inequality.

Noboa won the initial round in October 2024 with a margin of less than 1% of the vote. He claims his military-driven “Plan Fénix” has cracked down on crime, and while the homicide ratedropped from 46.18 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 38.76 per 100,000 people in 2024, it still exceeds the 6.85 homicides per 100,000 people recorded in 2019.

Gonzalez on Sunday evening called the result a “grotesque electoral fraud” and vowed to challenge the results.

If you’re dividing an increasingly polarized Latin America into ideological buckets: you can leave Ecuador firmly in the right-hand column. Noboa, who styles himself as a political outsider, comes from the right and is an open admirer of US President Donald Trump, whose help he has sought in his crusade against gang violence.