The long interlude between the first and second laps With almost 33% of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections, Arauz was in a clear advantage over Lasso for the second round. The conservative candidate reached a mobile phone number list modest 19.7% of the valid votes on February 7. Yaku Pérez had been in third place, outside the ballot, with 19.4% of the valid votes. The key question was whether those 13-point difference between Arauz and Lasso could be overcome or if, on the contrary, all that remained mobile phone number list was to wait for a victory for Correa's candidate.
Arauz's advantage was quite visible, given Ecuador's electoral geography. Five provinces (of 24) concentrate more than 60% of the voters, and seven, more than 70%. Four of these first seven provinces are on the Coast and are mobile phone number list territories where Correismo has always obtained majority electoral support. In the first round of 2021, Arauz reached a considerable vote –37% in El Oro, his lowest percentage, and 52% in Manabí, the best provincial performance of the correísta candidate.
In all these provinces, Arauz's distance from the candidate who came second in each of them was, on average, 25 percentage points. Lasso, for his part, had his mobile phone number list best performance in Guayas (25% or 564,000 votes) and Pichincha (26% or 437,000 votes). Guayas, the province that includes Guayaquil, it was the only coastal province where Lasso got a sizable percentage.