Socialist Andres Arauz won the first electoral round in Ecuador. He advanced to an April 11 runoff, but it is still too close to call whether he would face environmental activist Yaku Perez or conservative banker Guillermo Lasso.
Official preliminary results of the elections in Ecuador showed socialist Andres Arauz as the winner of the first electoral round.
The results also showed a tight fight for second place between Yaku Perez and Guillermo Lasso.
The Ecuadorian left-wing candidate reacted to the provisional results by pointing out that "one thing is certain, we are first."
Andres Arauz criticized the publication of the "quick count" indicating that the Electoral Council acted in a non-technical manner when it presented results based on only 90 percent of the tally sheets from a small sample.
"The sample is only a subset of reality," said the Union for Hope (UNES) politician who is also a Ph.D. candidate in economics and a mathematician.
In his first public reaction to a provisional count that does not favor him, Guillermo Lasso said he will only recognize the results when 100 percent of the tally sheets have been counted.
"They have proceeded badly by confusing the Ecuadorian people with a quick count of some 2,100 tally sheets. Five minutes later, however, they induce the error when one of the electoral advisors informs that the results of the quick count put us in the second round," the right-wing politician argued.
