Ecuador's Presidential Election

According to the Consejo Nacional Electoral del Ecuador, Rafael Correa's chosen candidate Lenín Moreno has 39.1% of the vote, and opposition Guillermo Lasso has 28.28%. To win without a runoff, Moreno needs to edge his total up to 40%, at which time he would also have 10+% more than the second place candidate. There are conflicting accounts of where the remaining votes will likely go.

Boz has been following this on Twitter and makes the good point that even if Moreno gets just over the hump, he'll have a problem given the slim margin. The runoff system is intended to provide more legitimacy to the victor than, for example, we have in the United States. But if you just barely get to the minimum threshold, it works just as poorly as here.

Whatever the result, this will be labeled as part of a regional referendum on ideology, which is unfortunate. This is more about a country with a government that's been in power a long time, faces some serious economic challenges, but also which stabilized Ecuador to a degree it hasn't enjoyed in a very long time.