GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador, Feb 11, (AP): Ecuador’s April runoff election for president will test the lasting influence of former leftist President Rafael Correa when his protege, lawyer Luisa González, goes up against the conservative incumbent Daniel Noboa. Neither Noboa nor González won an outright majority in Sunday’s first-round election, but they both were way ahead of the other 14 candidates and each within a percentage point of each other, according to results Monday.

The run-off will be a repeat of the 2023 snap election, prompted by the dissolution of the National Assembly, in which Noboa earned a truncated 16-month presidency after the wealthy businessman campaigned on controlling Ecuador’s crime wave of recent years. González, this year as in 2023, is appealing to voters’ nostalgia for Correa’s 2007-2017 decade in power that predated the drug trafficking crime wave and that was marked by free-spending policies of the still-influential Correa.

Many voters on Sunday framed their choice on whether they wanted to see a return to what is known as Correismo. Those who support the movement long for the low crime and unemployment rates of that era but gloss over Correa’s authoritarian tendencies, the huge debt he ran up and the corruption-related sentence handed down to him in absentia in 2020. Even among those who support Noboa, many have said their vote is more a rejection of Correismo than a resounding endorsement of the president’s crimefighting and governance so far.

Many Ecuadorians were angered last year when Noboa authorized power cuts of up to 14 hours that were blamed on severe drought, and have been wary of his mobilization of the military in the fight against drug traffickers. The tight margin between the two candidates reflects "Noboa’s inability to reach across the aisle, at least to other sectors of society wary about the return of Correismo,” said Grace Jaramillo, an Andean region expert and professor at the University of British Columbia.

But it also reflects "concern about his lackluster management of the energy crisis late in the fall" and what critics see as an abuse of power in fighting drug dealers, she said. Figures released by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council showed that with 92.1% of the ballot counted, Noboa received 4.22 million votes, or 44.31%, while González received 4.17 million votes, or 43.83%. The 14 other candidates in the race were far behind them.