By FRANCISCO HIDALGO FLOR*
The results of the first round show a marked political polarization from which only the indigenous movement is spared
This article aims to analyze the results of the first round of the Ecuadorian presidential and legislative elections, held on February 9, 2025, in terms of the evolution of neoliberal and neodevelopmentalist tendencies, accentuating a political polarization from which only the indigenous movement is spared, and foresees scenarios for the second round, which will be held in April.
The results of this first round revealed an unusual tie between presidential candidate Daniel Noboa, of the “National Democratic Alliance” (ADN), who obtained 44,17% (4.527.400 votes); and candidate Luisa González, of the “Citizen Revolution” (RC), who obtained 43,97% (4.507.600 votes).[I] far behind, in third place, was candidate Leónidas Iza, representing the Pachakutik movement (Iza is also president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador – CONAIE), who obtained 5,25% (538.400 votes); in fourth place was candidate Andrea González, sponsored by the Patriotic Society Party, with 2,69% (275.700 votes). In total, there were 16 candidates, but the others obtained less than 1% of the electorate.
But a draw, whether in politics or in sport, can bring more uncertainty than certainty for the next round, as football fans know all too well. Let's look at graph 1:
Figure 1: Results of the first round of the February 2025 presidential elections
The analyses carried out after the first round highlight this polarization and tie as an unprecedented fact in the electoral processes of recent decades, since 88,2% of the valid votes were defined in the first round by these two options, leaving only 11,8% of the votes in dispute, of which just under half (5,3%) correspond to the votes obtained by Pachakutik, a large part of them from indigenous populations.
In the present reading, alongside the polarization, which is evident, as shown in Graph 1, we propose to look at a partial defeat of the conservative-neoliberal tendency, as well as the partial consolidation of the neodevelopmentalist tendency, at the cost of the weakening of other organic expressions within each of the tendencies, and the regrouping of the indigenous tendency, but at a distance from the previous ones.
It should be noted that we have adopted the notions of conservative-neoliberal tendency, as it characterizes it better than the general description of “right”, and of neo-developmentalist tendency, as it characterizes it better than the general description of “left”, just as we consider that, in the Ecuadorian case, it is possible to distinguish an indigenous tendency, which is difficult to classify as “right” or “left”. Throughout the article, we present the content of each of them.
Evolution of the conservative-neoliberal trend
We are talking about a partial defeat of the conservative-neoliberal tendency in the first round in February, because behind the nomination of presidential candidate Daniel Noboa, two very strong structures were moving: on the one hand, the government apparatus, since, even during the open campaign days, Daniel Noboa did not leave office; and on the other, the support of the oligarchic sectors, to which he belongs, given that he is part of one of the agro-exporting clans: the Noboa group.
By seeking the president's re-election, this electoral process was given a plebiscitary tone, of acceptance or denial of Noboa's government, to which he ascended in November 2023,[ii] and this is a fundamental element to be considered when analyzing the election results.
Therefore, a very succinct description of the axes of Daniel Noboa's regime (if it is possible to describe it that way) is in order, which were decisive for the political decision in the presidential elections.
The first axis is the security policy and militarization of the state administration. Let us remember that, a few weeks after assuming the presidency, Daniel Noboa declared a national state of emergency and, from December 2023 to the present (March 2025), Ecuador has remained in a state of emergency, together with the decree of “internal armed conflict” to combat drug trafficking gangs, classified as “organized terrorist groups”.
As part of this axis of security and militarization, the doctrine of the “relativity of human rights” was expanded to prioritize repressive and criminalizing actions by the national police apparatus and armed forces.
The second axis is neoliberal policy, in two aspects: compliance with the agreements with the International Monetary Fund, signed since the government of Lenin Moreno, in 2018, and which were ratified by the regimes of Lasso, in 2022, and Daniel Noboa, in 2024, especially the reduction of the state apparatus, elimination of subsidies, alongside the acceleration of privatization policies of state-owned companies, especially in the oil and electricity sectors.
In this first round, with a plebiscitary tone, Daniel Noboa managed to concentrate the votes of the right-wing tendency around his candidacy, but not the vast majority, as can be seen in Graph 2.
Figure 2: Evolution of the conservative-neoliberal trend vote (2021 to 2025)
Graph 2 shows the evolution of the conservative-neoliberal trend's vote in the 2021, 2023 and 2025 elections. In 2021, in the first round, candidate Guillermo Lasso obtained 19,7% of the votes and, in the second round, 52,3%, in a runoff contested with candidate Arauz, from the Citizens' Revolution; however, halfway through the period, he decreed the “death cross” measure, thus resigning from the presidency, and precipitating a new election in 2023, in which candidate Daniel Noboa obtained 23,4% of the votes in the first round, and, in the second round with candidate Luisa González, from the Citizens' Revolution, obtained 51,8% of the votes.
For 2025, in the first round, Daniel Noboa already has the votes of the entire trend, with 44,1%, moving on to the second round, but his rival, again candidate Luisa González, is tied with him, with a very close value, 43,9%. Thus, the news is that Daniel Noboa has a very narrow margin to grow.
It is worth noting that this tie in the first round is reflected in the composition of the new National Assembly (as the legislative and oversight power is called in Ecuador). Thus, the parliamentary group of candidate Noboa's party, the ADN group, has 67 seats; the parliamentary group of candidate Luisa González's party, the RC group, has 66 seats; the parliamentary group of candidate Iza's party, that is, Pachakutik, has 8 seats, all of this in a parliament of 150 seats. Neither of the two main forces can obtain a majority on its own.
We see this as a partial defeat for the right-wing tendency because, in order to fully implement its program of militarization, privatization and reduction of rights, it needed more convincing electoral support, but this is still limited. Its objective was to move towards a Constituent Assembly, which would eliminate the current Constitution of 2008 and draft a new Magna Carta with a clear and openly conservative and neoliberal tendency. In the first round of the campaign, Noboa set out this objective of constitutional change, that is, of a profound counter-reform, and this has now been completed.
It is essential to point out that this consolidation of the conservative-neoliberal tendency around Daniel Noboa is simultaneously causing the decline of organic forces on the right, such as the traditional Social Christian Party, which had a sustained national vote of around 17% and maintained its leadership in the country's most populous province, Guayas, and its capital, Guayaquil, but will see its vote reduced in 2025, with a presidential candidate who barely reaches 0,4% of the vote and a legislative bench that corresponds to 3% of representation, losing in its former strongholds.
In turn, the electoral group around Daniel Noboa, known by the acronym ADN, was registered as a party just over a year ago and its main exponents come from the presidential candidate's family and business circle.
Evolution of the neo-developmentalist trend
Now it is time to talk about what we mentioned as a consolidation of the neo-developmentalist tendency around the Citizen Revolution party and candidate Luisa González. To do this, it is worth looking at Graph 3.
Figure 3: Evolution of the neo-developmentalist trend vote (2021 to 2025).
Graph 3 shows the evolution of the vote for the Revolucion Ciudadana party, which, in the first round of 2021, with the Arauz-Rabascal electoral ticket, obtained 32,7% of the votes, and thus advanced to the second round against candidate Guillermo Lasso, although in this round it only obtained 47,6%. For the early elections of 2023, with candidate Luisa Gonzales, it obtained 33,6% in the first round; with this, it advanced to the second round against candidate Daniel Noboa, but only obtained 48,1% of the votes. For the first round of the 2025 elections, it reached 43,9% and practically tied with the other candidate; this is the best electoral record in the first round of the presidential elections since the time of former president Rafael Correa, in 2009.
We consider it a neo-developmentalist trend because it is the notion that best describes its trajectory and program: recovery of the role of the State in investing in public works and social welfare, control and support for investment by large and medium-sized companies, state planning and change in the production matrix. Its main banners are the achievements of the governments of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition to the neoliberal regimes of Moreno, Lasso and Noboa (2017-2025).
At the same time, this allows us to ideologically record the evolution of this amalgamation around the Citizen Revolution party (previously Alianza País, founded in 2006) and the decline of the old left-wing parties, which is clearly expressed in the results of these February 2025 elections, since, while this party is ratified as the first political force organized at the national level, support for its parliamentary lists is close to 40%, and traditional structures such as Popular Unity and the Socialist Party barely reach 1,7% and 1,01%, respectively.
One difference worth noting, if we qualitatively compare the evolution of the conservative-neoliberal trend with the neodevelopmentalist trend, is that, while in the former there are notable variations in the political structure that supports it, from the Creo movement, founded in 2011 and almost disappeared in 2025, to the ADN movement, legally recognized in 2024, that is, a sharp organic instability, which denotes more the presence of electoral companies than of political parties (López: 2024, p. 74); in the latter, we see an organic consolidation that supports the Citizens' Revolution as the main party structure in Ecuador. This is a relevant difference in the conditions to be faced in the second round, in April 2025.
Indigenous tendency and programmatic turn
A particularity of the Ecuadorian social and political process is the persistence of an indigenous social and political tendency, which has emerged since the founding of the Pachakutik movement in 1995, very close to the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador – Conaie, and which is evident in the results of the elections of February 9, 2025, that is, a journey of thirty years.
The Pachakutik vote, around the candidate Leónidas Iza, who is also the current president of Conaie, is the only one that resists the trend of polarization that characterized these first-round elections, so much so that its vote of 5,25%, which is similar to the historical electoral average of this grouping, is enough to place it as the third political force at the national level and the third parliamentary bench in the new National Assembly to be installed in May 2025.
An analysis of the composition of the vote received by Leónidas Iza indicates the following: “the presidential candidate received his greatest support in rural parishes and cantons with a predominantly indigenous population and, at the same time, the majority of his votes came from urban centers in the mountain region” (Rodríguez: 2025, p. 2).
Leónidas Iza's political-electoral support has two complementary sources: on the one hand, the centers of greatest indigenous and rural concentration, especially in the Andean region, but also some in the Amazon region, and, on the other, constant support in the urban centers of the Andean region.
This electoral factor was able to resolve the phase of internal dispersion, which occurred in the indigenous movement between 2022 and 2024, in favor of Iza's leadership, as a point of agglutination and response to the neoliberal tendency, led by Noboa, and the neo-developmentalist tendency, led by Luisa González.
But it failed to become a national trend, as happened in 2019, with the candidacy of Yaku Pérez, when he reached 19% of the votes.
Iza expresses a generational change in relation to the historical leaders of the indigenous movement and, at the same time, a programmatic shift, in the sense that, if before the programmatic axis was composed of the demands of plurinationality and interculturality, with agrarian demands in the background, now the programmatic axis is the demands of agrarian change and resistance to neoliberalism, with characteristically ethnic demands taking a back seat.
Variable to consider: the context of resistance to neoliberalism and extractivism, the case of popular consultations
So far, we have explained electoral behavior in the first round of the presidential elections according to the evolution of the main political-organic trends: (i) conservative-neoliberal; (ii) neo-developmentalist; (iii) indigenous, with an emphasis on recent years (2021-2025).
We would now like to introduce another factor, which is not limited to the electoral-party level, but which has also been present in the electoral scenario of recent years: we refer to political behavior in national popular consultations or referendums, also held in recent years.
We consider this factor not only as an explanatory element of what has already happened, but also as an element to be considered regarding the likely evolution of electoral positions in the second round in April 2025.
We have argued that, in Ecuador, the national popular consultations expressed a range of resistance to neoliberalism and extractivism that goes beyond the limits of political-electoral trends (Hidalgo: 2024). Let us look at Graph 4.
Figure 4: Votes in the Popular Consultations (2023 and 2024)
Let us take the last three popular consultations and referendums held in Ecuador in 2023 and 2024: first, the referendum of February 2023, proposed by President Lasso. Question 1 referred to the issue of allowing the extradition of Ecuadorians who have committed drug trafficking crimes.
On this issue, the result was the denial of this position by 51,5% of the electorate. Secondly, the popular consultation held in August 2023, confirmed by the Constitutional Court, on the issue of maintaining the oil reserves of the Yasuní biodiversity zone underground, and the closure of open wells. On this issue, the result was the approval of the thesis with 59% of the electorate.
Thirdly, the April 2024 referendum, called by President Noboa, in which one of the questions referred to the reform of the Constitution in order to allow labor flexibility and the reduction of workers' rights; in this question, the result was the denial of this position with 69,5% of the electorate.
These majority statements by the electorate, in line with positions of resistance to fundamental neoliberal measures (such as labor flexibilization), resistance to extractivism (such as the closure of oil wells in regions of high biodiversity), and against the violation of rights (such as extradition to the United States), correspond to the impact of long- and short-term processes, of traditional popular movements, such as the labor movement, of recent social movements, such as the environmental movement, of theses that have permeated the national consciousness in different generational groups and in different regions of Ecuador.
This is a decisive social and political accumulation that, if the candidates for the second round know how to recover, bring together and tune in to this social and political conglomerate, could define the course of presidential renewal in Ecuador for the period 2025-2029.
*Francisco Hidalgo Flor, sociologist, is a professor at the Central University of Ecuador.
Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.
References
National Electoral Council: February 2025 election results (available at: https://elecciones.cne.gob.ec/ ).
Hidalgo, Francisco (2024). “Referendum 2024: evidence of anti-neoliberal social and political support” (available at: https://www.cetri.be/Referendum-2024-evidencia-acopios?lang=fr )
López, Adrián (2024). “I believe: the transit between the opposition and the government” (available at: https://revistadigital.uce.edu.ec/index.php/hoy )
Rodríguez, Javier (2025). “Ecuador 2025 presidential elections: What lessons will give us the first vuelta?” (available at: https://www.rosalux.org.ec/elecciones-presidenciales-ecuador-2025/ ).
Notes
[I] The difference between Daniel Noboa's votes and Luisa González's is just 19.800 votes, in an electoral universe of 11 million voters.
[ii] The 2023 presidential elections, first round in September and second round in November, were the result of the “cross-death” measure decreed by President Guillermo Lasso in June of that year.
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