Peru's presidential first round from April 11

Lasso wins Ecuador presidency by winning interior, indigenous provinces

On Sunday, Ecuadoreans elected a new president, conservative Guillermo Lasso, with 52.5% of the vote in a runoff election. Lasso defeated leftist candidate Andrés Arauz, a close ally of former president Rafael Correa. 

The result was somewhat surprising for Lasso, who had barely edged out a third-place candidate in the first round election in February. Lasso and indigenous leftist candidate Yaku Pérez ended up separated by approximately 30,000 votes in the first election -- a margin of only 0.35% of the total votes cast. Meanwhile, Arauz enjoyed a roughly 1.2 million vote advantage over both candidates. Recounts ended up confirming Lasso's margin as he advanced to the second round against Arauz.

In Sunday's runoff election, Arauz dominated on the coastal provinces and Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, while Lasso won the capital, Quito, and the interior provinces. This indicates that Lasso picked up support in the country's mostly indigenous interior provinces, ones that had been won by Pérez in February. Notable is that Lasso was able to win some of these regions by a larger margin than even the capital province of Pichincha, where Quito is located. For example, Lasso's biggest margins were in low-population interior provinces of Tunguraha, Napo and Pastaza where he won by an approximate 75-25 margin of the vote. Whereas in Pichincha, he won by 65-35.

A comparison of the two elections below. February results are on the left. Orange provinces were won by Arauz, Blue by Lasso and Pink by Pérez. Sunday's results are on the right. Full results from February here.