(Bloomberg) -- Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa is less than three percentage points away from a first round victory in February’s presidential vote, according to a new poll.
Voting intent for the market-friendly incumbent rose to 36.1% from 32.9% in December, according to a survey by local polling company Comunicaliza.
Support for his socialist rival Luisa Gonzalez rose to 33% from 29.3%, the poll found.
That would give investor favorite Noboa 47.3% of valid votes. This excludes void and blank ballots and assumes a proportional distribution of undecided votes, Alvaro Marchante, who heads the polling company, said in an interview.
Under Ecuador’s election rules, a candidate needs more than 50% of the vote, or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the runner up, with spoiled or empty ballots not counting.
The country will hold an April runoff if no candidate wins outright in the first round.
The other 14 candidates between them would obtain a total of 7.2%, or 9.4% of valid ballots, the poll found.
The survey of 5,251 voting-age Ecuadorians was conducted from Jan. 8-11, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.35%.
Noboa won support after taking office late 2023 for his hard line on security. However, the violence levels have since picked up again, while the government has struggled to revive growth in one of the region’s weakest economies.
Of those polled, 27% said they would vote for Gonzalez’s Citizen Revolution party in the legislative election, up 3.6 points, while 25.5% said they would vote for Noboa’s National Democratic Action, up 4 points.
(Corrects how pollster calculates valid vote, in fourth and seventh paragraphs)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Catch all the live action on Elections and get exclusive coverage on Assembly Election Results 2024 with Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.