The two finalists for the presidency of Eucador, Daniel Noboa and Luisa González, will face each other this Sunday in a debate in which, according to pollsters, they will try to convince the 37% of voters who have not yet decided to vote Cedatos. Violence was the main theme of this atypical campaign, which began with the assassination of one of the candidates, Fernando Villavicencio. The United States is offering a $5 million reward for information that helps catch the masterminds.
Voting intent puts ADN Alliance candidate Noboa at 44%, compared to Citizen Revolution candidate Luisa González at 32%, according to the Opinion Profiles poll. The largest group of undecided people are young people between 16 and 25 years old, 39.6% of them have not yet decided who they will vote for on Sunday, October 15th. And it is the ethereal group that the candidates want to capture and for this they have changed their image, trying to look fresher and using youthful and friendly language, typical of social networks. They share the music they like and reveal the five secrets you should know about them, although the burden of the elections does not fall on young people given the current harsh reality in Ecuador.
And that’s because insecurity in the South American country has anchored the election campaign on social networks, displacing the ritual of walking through the streets with drums, drums and flags that used to end in a show on a stage. “Fear not only exacerbates the security of the candidates, but also of the leaders who are in the territory and mobilize people for fear of a new attack,” says political scientist César Febres Cordero.
This fear scenario was shaped by the crime committed by presidential candidate Villavicencio on August 9 in Quito, a few days before the first debate, which showed that the unknown, the invisible, can change an election in just a single moment. Hours, as well as the US government’s recent decision to offer a reward that “cannot be read outside the electoral process,” says Pedro Donoso, crisis analyst. “This offer and its outcome could impact the electoral process, which in turn could impact the election campaign of the Citizen Revolutionary Movement,” he added. Villavicencio’s political career has focused on denouncing corrupt actions by the government of former President Rafael Correa. Until hours before his death, he reported irregularities in construction contracts in strategic areas, which were submitted to the public prosecutor’s office.
But the election violence goes beyond the assassination of Villavicencio or the assassination of Manta mayor Agustín Intriago or the more than 5,300 murders recorded in 2023. For Donoso, violence can mean something different depending on the region and who I looked at: “In Quito there is the body of a suicide because there are more suicides than murders, in Durán there is the body of a hitman and in the Amazon there is poverty. “ This is used in the election campaign by the candidates who talk a lot about the problem and little about the solutions and the team they will have to address the main concern of Ecuadorians.
Both candidates are trying to be the “new thing” in politics, to have their own identity and to avoid comparisons with other politicians or governments. “González, for example, has not completely abandoned the discourse of the past, but no longer uses the catchphrase “We already did it” that he used in the first round,” says Febres Cordero, “but he has not managed to “I have a clear strategy to talk about the future and what the current circumstances offer to change them in the year and a half of my reign,” he adds.
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While the young businessman struggles with the fact that the shadow of his government is the same as that of Guillermo Lasso, 38% of people polled by Perfiles de Opinión believe that he will form a government similar to the current one, and that means that “ “The execution or the lack of state presence is easily attributable to Lasso and that could be an aggravating factor for the candidate Noboa,” says Donoso, describing the warning of a dry spell that the country’s electricity sector is going through and the intensity, with which the phenomenon occurs El child.
Given the lack of choice on the streets, Sunday’s presidential debate will be an opportunity for candidates to demystify what is being said about them. But the significance lies in the period after the debate, analysts agree. “With the strategy, they will keep this demystification alive until election day,” Donoso says.
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