Final preliminary results:
Question A (armed forces support to police) Yes 72.4%
Question B (extradition) Yes 64.34%
Question C (specialized judiciaries) Yes 59.92%
Question D (international arbitration) No 65.16%
Question E (hourly employment) No 69.5%
Question F (controls by the army) Yes 69.66%
Question G (increase in criminal penalties) Yes 67.34%
Question H (full prison sentences) Yes 66.69%
Question I (offense of possessing arms reserved for security forces) Yes 63.90%
Question J (use of seized arms by the security forces) Yes 64.06%
Question K (expropriation of seized assets) Yes 61.0%
Detailed results, down to parish level can be found
here.
Maps
Question AThe overall pattern is that the ‘yes’ receives a greater support among the major urban centers (peaking in the wealthiest and whitest neighborhoods) while obtaining a reduced, yet important, support in the rest of the country bar most of the indigenous-populated areas and the strongholds of Correísmo in Manabí and Esmeraldas provinces (generally overlapping with the remotest, poorest and most marginalized rural areas: the triumph of the ‘no’ in the easternmost part of the Amazon is telling).
The ‘yes’ accounts for 75.2% of the valid votes in the canton of Quito, 77.7% in the canton of Guayaquil, 79.6% in the canton of Cuenca and 77.5% in the canton of Santo Domingo, hence winning in a landslide in the fourth most populated cities of the country.
Such results come with significant disparities at parish level in these cantons with the ‘yes’ receiving stronger support in the more affluent neighborhoods than in the poorer urban parishes and in the rural parts of said cantons.
In Quito, the yes’ best parishes are Rumipamba (84.7%), Iñaquito (82.6%) and Cumbayá (83.0%), the first two covering affluent neighborhoods adjacent to the business district and the third one being a commuter town housing many managers and professionals and including several gated communities. By contrast, support for the ‘yes’ falls to 69.9% in Argelia, 71.1% in Comité del Pueblo and 72.1% in Calderón, the first two being low-income urban parishes and the third one being a popular suburb of Quito which has experienced a very rapid growth in the last decades. Support for the ‘yes’ is generally even lower in the rural parishes descending to 62.1% in Gualea, an agricultural community located in the Andean Chocó bioregion.
Similarly, in Guayaquil, the ‘yes’ receives its best results in the parishes constituting the historical core of the city (ranging from 80.2% to 84.9% of the valid votes) while obtaining a relatively lower support in the peripheral and poorer urban parishes of Febres-Cordero (76.9%) and Ximena (76.2%) housing sizable Afro-Ecuadorian communities. Worst urban parish is however Pascuales (71.8%), a parish comprising important social housing and housing cooperatives and where the RC usually obtains its best results at municipal level. Support further decreased in the rural hinterland with 68.6% in Posorja, 65.4% in Juan Gómez Rendón and 65.1% in Puná, the largest island in the Gulf of Guayaquil home to fishing communities.
The ‘yes’ prevails by a landslide in the super-wealthy suburbs of Guayaquil, reaching 88.8% in La Aurora (canton of Daule), home to numerous gated communities, and 95.6% (best parish nationwide) in La Puntilla (canton of Samborondón), traditionally the most right-wing parish of the country as it is an exclusive area for the very wealthy. In the canton of Durán, the impoverished and marginalized suburb of Guayaquil and a hotbed of criminality and violence, the ‘yes’ gets 72.4% of the valid votes (hence the national average), which seems to indicate that there voters are considering that the military intervention is a good solution to address criminality, an opinion not shared in all areas hardly hit by criminality.
The ‘yes’ gets support above the national average in most provincial seats, in particular in the cantons of Riobamba (81.5%), Loja (84.0%), Esmeraldas (81.2%, again a place where criminality has got out of control), Ambato (83.5%) or Azogues (84.4%), all places which are rather right-leaning/anti-Correísta. However, a rural/urban cleavage is also to notice there with support in favor of the ‘yes’ being stronger in the urban cores than in the rural parts. Tellingly, in Loja, Ambato and Riobamba cantons, the weakest parish for the ‘yes’ is the most or one of the most indigenous ones: 52.7% in San Lucas, 52.6% in Pilahuín, 52.2% in Flores.
Not all indigenous communities are less inclined to support the ‘yes’ however, as it prevailed by healthy margins in the southern part of Napo, the historical hometurf of Lucio Gutiérrez (receiving 82.4% and 80.8% in the overwhelmingly indigenous parishes of Pano and Puerto Napo in the canton of Tena).
Other areas of large support for the ‘yes’ can be noticed in southeast Carchi, around Tulcán (81% in the two urban parishes of Tulcán), in central Imbabura around the provincial seat of Ibarra, in the rural center-west part of Esmeraldas province, in the urban centers in the Amazon (85.7% in Zamora, 78.9% in Macas, 84.1% in Puyo but 70.8% in El Coca and 64.4% in Nueva Loja) – contrasting with the rural and indigenous hinterland where support was generally weaker – the whole area stretching from Latacunga to Riobamba and covering southeast Cotopaxi, central Tungurahua and the northeastern corner of Chimborazo (combination of urban centers and white/mestizo farmer communities with support for the ‘yes’ often surpassing the 85%), the central part of Loja province, the mining area in southeast El Oro (84.3% in the canton of Portovelo; 83.2% in the canton of Zaruma). These are areas which generally voted for Hervas in 2021 and Noboa in 2023.
Meanwhile, support below the national average has to be recorded in several urban centers of the Costa region: 71.2% in the canton of Babahoyo, 71.8% in the canton of Quevedo, 66.3% in the canton of Portoviejo, 65.5% in the canton of Chone and only 58.2% in the canton of Manta. The three later ones are located in the province of Manabí, hardly hit by violence but also the stronghold of the Citizen Revolution. The ‘yes’ barely wins in the canton of San Vicente (50.1%) whose mayor, Brigitte García, was assassinated few days before the election with the ‘no’ even receiving 52.8% in Canoa, the rural parish from where García hailed from (the first inhabitant of the rural parish to hold the job of mayor).
The ‘no’ prevailed in 134 out of 1,237 parishes, mostly in indigenous communities or in places traditionally very favorable to the RC. In the latter category can be found maritime parishes along the Pacific Coast in southern Esmeraldas-Manabí, in particular in the Cojimíes Estuary, around Jama (55.0% for the ‘no’ in that canton), and in Manta’s suburban areas (59.0% for the ‘no’ in Jaramjijó, 57.8% in San Mateo, 57.3% in San Lorenzo); parishes located in the heartland of the Montubio country (51.9% in the canton of Pichincha; 54.5% in the canton of Olmedo); the border area with Colombia in northeast Esmeraldas/northwest Carchi); the Afro-Ecuadorian-populated Chota valley at the border between Carchi and Imbabura; the Otavalo and Kayambi indigenous rural communities in southern Imbabura/northeast Pichincha/northwest Napo (80.0% for the ‘no’ in Oyacachi – fourth best parish nationwide – usually the parish where the RC candidate receives its largest result in presidential election); most of Sucumbíos province and the easternmost part of Orellana (where the announced end of oil exploitation in Yasuní may have hurt Noboa).
The rest are mostly indigenous populated parishes and/or parishes where opposition to extractive activities are strong (not systematical, ‘yes’ accounts for 78.0% of the valid votes in San Salvador de Cañaribamba). Tellingly, the two parishes where the ‘no’ receives the strongest support were Sarayacu (Pastaza province) with 86.4% and Las Pampas (Cotopaxi province) with 81.2%. In the first one, the local Amazon indigenous community has opposed since decades to oil extraction; the second one has been the epicenter of the opposition to mining projects in the neighboring Palo Quemado parish (59.7% in favor of the ‘yes’ there) which was met with heavy hand from the Noboa government. The ‘yes’ was barely defeated in La Merced de Buenos Aires (49.5%) where illegal mining camps controlled by criminal groups were expelled by the army in 2019 and where local communities are now opposed to legal mining projects.
Otherwise, traditional strongholds of Pachakutik/the CONAIE voted for the ‘no’, in first place central Cotopaxi (Leonidas Iza’s homeland), the heavily indigenous and impoverished indigenous areas in Bolívar, Chimborazo and Cañar and most of the Jivaroan-populated areas in Morona Santiago and Pastaza, along the Peruvian border.
Question CQuestion EOnly upper-class downtowns, millionaires’ ghetto in La Aurora-La Puntilla and random rural parishes vote in favor of the proposal.
