Traumatised by the way violence has upended their lives, Ecuadorians have embraced Noboa’s mano dura (iron fist) policies, handing the military a central role in the battle against organised crime. All the candidates, even those on the left, have adopted some version of those policies in their platforms, and Ecuador is set to follow other Latin American countries in entrenching the military at the head of its drug war strategy. 

Violence has already marred the election campaign: in mid-January, Eber Ponce, the mayor of the town of Arenillas in the coastal province of El Oro, was killed in an armed attack, and several candidates have been injured or received death threats. The threats drove Pedro Granja, the presidential candidate for the Ecuadorian Socialist Party, to suspend public campaigning.

Politicians are cowed, fearful of becoming targets if they speak out against criminal groups, reject their bribes or raise suspicions of supporting rival groups. The assassination in 2023 of Fernando Villavicencio, a presidential candidate and outspoken critic of criminal outfits and corruption in public life, remains a chilling reminder of what can happen. Villavicencio was shot that August in front of rallygoers in the north of Quito after denouncing threats from a criminal group called Los Choneros that he said had warned him to stop mentioning them in his campaign. Eventually, five people were convicted of his killing, and prosecutors said the two ringleaders were in fact from a rival gang, Los Lobos, one of the biggest organised crime groups in the country. The order to kill Villavicencio, prosecutors said, came from the Latacunga prison, a stronghold of the latter group.

What are the most likely electoral outcomes?

Polls show the contest for the presidency is likely to narrow down to a repeat of the October 2023 election, which pitted Noboa, the youthful scion of Ecuador’s richest family, against Luisa González, a lawyer who is running on her experience as a former legislator and public official for almost a decade in the government of former left-wing president Rafael Correa. A three-term president whose presence looms large over the country’s polarised politics and who still claims a loyal following, Correa now lives in exile in Belgium to avoid arrest on charges of corruption, which he denies.

Noboa’s popularity had soared during the first months of his government to over 80 per cent after he responded to a series of violent events in January 2024 with a heavy-handed law enforcement approach (see below). But his ratings have since subsided, and now stand at a little over 50 per cent, in large part due to the persistence of insecurity despite his draconian measures. Violence has fallen slightly over the past year, but killings are climbing once again and reached a new high in January 2025, which was one of the most violent months in the country’s history.

Other setbacks have also contributed to his decline in opinion polls. The worst seasonal drought in six decades, exacerbated by climate change, growing demand for energy and years of poor maintenance, has played havoc with the country’s electricity supply, which depends on hydroelectric power; the resulting blackouts in late 2024 lasted as long as fourteen hours a day. Recent rainfall has raised reservoir levels, but the threat of renewed rationing persists. The energy crisis piled additional stress on Ecuador’s economy, which has been in a downturn since 2022 after recovering briefly from a deep recession during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Central Bank of Ecuador, the economy contracted for three consecutive quarters in 2024.

Opinion pollsters, meanwhile, have pointed to a large number of undecided voters, meaning that a surprise candidate might qualify for the second round. The array of candidates includes businesspeople, former legislators, lawyers, activists, an Indigenous leader, a retired police chief, television broadcasters and former government officials, although only one candidate appears for now to have a good shot at reaching the second round in an upset. Andrea González, Villavicencio’s 2023 running mate, has gained support following a strong performance in the presidential debate in which she directly challenged Luisa González, presenting herself as a firm anti-Correista who can appeal to undecided voters. 

How did Ecuador become so violent?

Ecuador’s outbreak of lethal violence has been driven by a mix of external and domestic causes. As a neighbour of Colombia, whose border regions of Nariño and Putumayo are now home to some of the country’s largest and fastest-growing concentrations of coca crops, Ecuador has been particularly vulnerable to international shifts in cocaine supply. Mexican criminal organisations gained a firmer grip on cocaine trafficking routes after the 2016 Colombian peace agreement led to the demobilisation of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which had controlled coca cultivation and cocaine production sites across the country. 

As the Mexicans opened new routes in a bid to bypass eradication and interdiction efforts in Colombia, Ecuador stood out as an appealing soft target. During the 2017-2021 presidency of Lenín Moreno, which took austerity measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund, the government cut prison spending by 30 per cent, eliminated the justice ministry and froze security budgets. These cuts weakened Ecuador’s security forces and border controls, as well as the government’s intelligence gathering and investigative capacity. The pull of Guayaquil, a major container port city with preferential trade access to Europe, helped realign cocaine trafficking routes toward the Pacific, spurring a surge in drug trafficking from Ecuador’s seaports and coastlines.

The shift in routes proved a lucrative opportunity for Ecuadorian gangs, coinciding with a moment when they had begun to fracture. An intense turf war broke out among local groups that were associated with various transnational criminal outfits, primarily Mexican drug cartels and Balkan mafias. The unsolved assassination of alias “Rasquiña”– the leader of Los Choneros – in late 2020 led to a steep escalation in violence as the once dominant gang split into smaller rival factions. “Rasquiña’s murder was the breaking point”, a former gang member in Durán, a poor and exceptionally violent municipality that is part of metropolitan Guayaquil, told Crisis Group. “That was when the battle of all against all began”. These groups have continued since then to engage in bloody clashes for control of drug trafficking routes and prisons. 

Violence is at its most intense along the coast, where ports and river access routes to the Pacific are highly prized by criminal groups. In Guayaquil, for example, traffickers fight for dominion over crucial entry and exit routes to rivers and ports. The groups also seek to exert power over surrounding communities near river access points to the Gulf of Guayaquil, using them as storage hubs for their drug shipments. As criminal groups enter new illicit markets, notably illegal mining, and enlarge their geographical footprint, violence has also spread into previously untouched areas. This trend has become more conspicuous over the past year, above all in mining areas like Camilo Ponce Enríquez in Azuay province, in the southern highlands. Murders there soared in 2024, transforming it into the most violent district in the country, with a staggeringly high homicide rate of 259 per 100,000 people. Shootouts between criminal groups fighting over mines have become routine, accompanied by massive kidnappings of mine workers and frequent discoveries of burned, dismembered bodies. The mayor was killed after receiving death threats.