Ecuador heads to the polls for presidential election led by millionaire president and leftist lawyer

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) - Ecuador's presidential election Sunday is shaping up to be a repeat of the 2023 race, when voters chose a conservative young millionaire over the leftist protégé of the country's most influential president this century.

President Daniel Noboa and Luis González are the clear front-runners among the pool of 16 candidates. All promised voters to reduce the widespread crime that pushed their lives into an unnerving new normal four years ago.

The spike in violence across the South American country is tied to the trafficking of cocaine produced in neighboring Colombia and Peru. So many voters have become crime victims that their personal and collective losses will be a determining factor in deciding whether a third president in four years can turn Ecuador around or if Noboa deserves more time in office.

Voting is mandatory in Ecuador. More than 13.7 million people are eligible to vote. On Thursday, thousands of inmates who await sentencing cast ballots at voting centers set up in more than 40 prisons.

To win outright, a candidate needs 50% of the vote or at least 40% with a 10-point lead over the closest opponent. If needed, a runoff election would take place on April 13.

Noboa defeated González in the October 2023 runoff of a snap election triggered by the decision of then-President Guillermo Lasso to dissolve the National Assembly and shorten his own mandate as a result. Noboa and González, a mentee of former President Rafael Correa, had only served short stints as lawmakers before launching their 2023 presidential campaigns.

Noboa, 37, is an heir to a fortune built on the banana trade. His political career began in 2021, when he won a seat in the National Assembly and chaired its Economic Development Commission. He opened an event organizing company when he was 18 and then joined his father's Noboa Corp., where he held management positions in the shipping, logistics and commercial areas.

Under his presidency, the homicide rate dropped from 8,237, or 46.18 per 100,000 people, in 2023 to 6,964, or 38.76 per 100,000 people, last year. Still, it remained far higher than the 1,188 homicides, or 6.85 per 100,000 people, in 2019.

González, 47, held various government jobs during the presidency of Correa, who led Ecuador from 2007 through 2017 with free-spending socially conservative policies and grew increasingly authoritarian in his last years as president. He was sentenced to prison in absentia in 2020 in a corruption scandal.

González was a lawmaker from 2021 until May 2023, when Lasso dissolved the National Assembly. She was unknown to most voters until Correa's party picked her as its presidential candidate for the snap election.