QUITO – Guillermo Lasso had a lead of more than 9 percentage points over Andres Arauz in Ecuador’s general election yesterday after 51% of the votes were counted, the National Electoral Council said.
Conservative former banker Lasso had 54.64% of the vote compared to left-of-centre economist Arauz’s 45.36 percent.
Arauz, the protege of former president Rafael Correa, had earlier claimed victory citing an exit poll that he said gave him a 1.6% advantage.
Earlier, television stations Ecuavisa and Teleamazonas published the results of the Cedatos exit poll that gave Lasso almost a 6.5 percentage point lead over Arauz.
But the stations also said that the Clima Social pollsters – the ones cited by Arauz’s campaign team in claiming victory – had indicated the result was a technical draw and thus decided not to publish their figures.
According to a count by AFP, there were 17% of invalid votes, amounting to around 925,000 votes.
Indigenous socialist candidate Yaku Perez, who narrowly missed out on the second round run-off by less than half a percentage point, had promoted a policy of abstention.
Perez, who had polled more than 19%, claimed after February’s first round he was the victim of fraud.
His Pachakutik indigenous movement had refused to back either candidate ahead of the second round. – AFP, April 12, 2021
