Ecuadoreans vote in closely watched presidential election

Cars cross a bridge flanked by campaign posters promoting presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso of the CREO party, left, and opponent Lenin Moreno, the presidential candidate representing the ruling party Alliance PAIS, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Wednesday, March 29, 2017. Until recently, Ecuador looked like the next domino to fall in a right-wing resurgence taking place across Latin America. Voters looked poised to kick out the leftists who have ruled for a decade and hand power to conservative banker Lasso. But the race now appears to be extremely tight thanks to a late surge by Moreno, President Rafael Correa’s hand-picked successor. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara) Cars cross a bridge flanked by campaign posters promoting presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso of the CREO party, left, and opponent Lenin Moreno, the presidential candidate representing the ruling party Alliance PAIS, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Wednesday, March 29, 2017. Until recently, Ecuador looked like the next domino to fall in a right-wing resurgence taking place across Latin America. Voters looked poised to kick out the leftists who have ruled for a decade and hand power to conservative banker Lasso. But the race now appears to be extremely tight thanks to a late surge by Moreno, President Rafael Correa’s hand-picked successor. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

By Associated Press April 2, 2017 3 min read

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) – Ecuador’s presidential vote Sunday is expected to be a close race that could either further tilt Latin America toward the right following a series of conservative election victories or reinforce President Rafael Correa’s “21st century socialism.”

Polls showed a neck-and-neck vote between Correa’s hand-picked successor, Lenin Moreno, and conservative former banker Guillermo Lasso. Correa is urging voters to pick the candidate who will continue his “Citizens’ Revolution” while the opposition candidate is promising to deliver a well-needed jolt to the nation’s beleaguered economy.

Results of the election in the small Andean nation of nearly 16 million will be closely watched for their broader geopolitical implications.

With Ecuador’s economy slated to shrink by 2.7 percent this year as oil prices remain low and with a majority of citizens stating in surveys that they are eager for change after 10 years of Correa’s iron-fisted rule, analysts had been anticipating that Ecuadoreans would back Lasso and join the growing list of Latin American nations shifting to the right.

Yet in the final weeks of the race, Moreno has inched ahead amid an aggressive campaign led by Correa to cast Lasso as a wealthy, out-of-touch politician who profited from the country’s 1999 banking crisis.