2014 Election Blog: Ecuador's Local Vote
The opposition captured mayoralties in the country’s five biggest cities, though early results show the governing party won a majority of mayors’ seats.
On February 23, Ecuador held municipal and provincial elections to elect 221 mayors, 46 provincial prefects, and local-level legislators for four-year terms. In the biggest race—for the country’s key mayoral seats—the opposition made strides, taking five of Ecuador’s largest metropolitan areas and challenging President Rafael Correa’s bid to expand the influence of the ruling Country Alliance party.
Along with taking the prized capital of Quito, the opposition won the mayoralties of Cuenca, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Manta, and the president’s hometown of Guayaquil, exit polls show. Given Correa’s push for governing party candidates in Quito and Guayaquil, the results represent “a significant political blow” to Correa and his party, writes Latin America analyst James Bosworth.
Last week, Correa had claimed that losing Quito would make Ecuador “ungovernable” and said the winning candidate Mauricio Rodas was associated with Venezuela’s “right wing.” He said: “We will begin to see results like those in Venezuela, where [President] Nicolás Maduro faces opposition from Caracas itself every day,” referring to Venezuela’s ongoing protests.
The election also set the stage for the 2017 presidential vote, when Correa says he will not seek a fourth term. Sunday’s election could build support for a presidential opposition candidate, analysts told The Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, the opposition remains fragmented, points out The Economist’s Americas View blog. Early results show that the Country Alliance won a majority of mayoralties, and Correa said his party could win up to 100 of the 221 mayoralties.
The vote also marked Ecuador’s first experiment with electronic voting. Voters in three provinces—around 10 percent of the country’s voter pool—cast a digital vote for the first time. The government hopes to expand the system to at least 50 percent of the country by 2017. The country’s electoral council said the electronic voting was a success, with early results available online. In this Andean country, voting is mandatory.