A thread about the February 7th, 2021 Ecuadorian presidential election

Rafael Correa, a socially conservative leftist, served 3 terms as president from 2007 to 2017. In 2017, he was succeeded by his wheelchair bound vice president, Lenin Moreno

Despite being named after Lenin, Moreno proved much more right-wing than his former boss. He broke with Correa who was charged with corruption and fled to Belgium. At the same time, Moreno allowed Julian Assange to be taken out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Moreno's more neo-liberal economic policies proved unpopular and he has chosen not to run for re-election. The candidate of his party, who insists she is neutral in the dispute between him and Correa, is polling single digits. As is another explicitly pro-Moreno social democrat

Hold on. I have to do something. I'm not doing research. I already know all this shit

So there's two main candidates who will probably go to a run-off election April 11th: Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso

Andrés Arauz was Minister of Culture under Correa. He has his own party called Democratic Center but is also backed by Correa's new party "Social Commitment Force". Correa was supposed to be his running mate but was ruled ineligible while in exile

Guillermo Lasso is a former Economy Minister, banker, and governor. He is the neo-liberal candidate. He has his own party creepily named "Creating Opportunities". He is also backed by Ecuador's traditional center-right party, the Social Christian Party

Lasso is leading in polling for the first round but I predict Arauz will win in a run-off

The most likely dark horse candidate to make it into the run-off by surprise would be Yaku Pérez, an indigenous rights activist from the indigenous rights political party "Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement – New Country"

Only other candidate with an outside chance is center left political science professor César Montúfar. Like some of the other candidates, he has his own personalist party, called "Concentration", and is also backed by another traditional party, in this case, the Socialist Party

There's a bunch of other candidates but none of them have any chance of winning

Wow, this was actually more boring than I thought. Why did I make this thread?