Comment on Tight race for president in Ecuador

QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s presidential vote Sunday was expected to be a close race that could either further tilt Latin America toward the right after a series of conservative election victories elsewhere in Latin America or reinforce President Rafael Correa’s “Citizens’ Revolution.” Polls showed a neck-and-neck vote between Correa’s hand-picked successor, Lenin Moreno, and conservative former banker Guillermo Lasso. Correa urged voters to pick the candidate who will continue his policies in support of the poor while the opposition candidate promised to deliver a well-needed jolt to the nation’s beleaguered economy. With Ecuador’s economy slated to shrink by 2.7 percent this year as oil prices remain low and with a majority of citizens stating in surveys that they are eager for change after 10 years of Correa’s iron-fisted rule, analysts had been anticipating that Ecuadoreans would back Lasso and join the growing list of Latin American nations shifting to the right. The vote count dragged on for several days before the official results were announced, provoking accusations of fraud from both sides and angry protests that have injected an unusual degree of volatility in the election results.