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A Moreno win would come as a relief for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after conservative candidate Guillermo Lasso vowed to remove Assange from the Ecuadorean embassy in London if he won the runoff.
It would also boost the struggling leftist movement in South America after right-leaning governments recently came to power in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru as a commodities boom ended, economies flagged and corruption scandals grew.
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| Ecuadorean presidential candidate Lenin Moreno (C) celebrates alongside Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa (L) and his wife Rocio Gonzalez during a national election day in a hotel, in Quito, April 2, 2017. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo |
The region's de facto leftist leader, President Nicolas Maduro of crisis-hit Venezuela, profusely congratulated Moreno on Twitter, as did Bolivia's President Evo Morales.
Lasso, a former banker, had promised to denounce the embattled Maduro, who foes say has lurched his country toward dictatorship.
Moreno, a paraplegic former vice-president, had secured 51.1 percent of the votes compared with Lasso's 48.9 percent, with more than 96 percent of votes counted, according to the electoral council. It has not yet declared a winner.
A somber Lasso, who had earlier proclaimed himself victorious based on a top pollster's exit poll, disputed the results that would extend a decade-long leftist rule in oil-rich Ecuador.
"They've crossed a line," he told supporters gathered in a hotel in his coastal hometown of Guayaquil. Lasso asked for a recount and vowed to challenge the results, a complex process that could take time.
"We're going to defend the will of the Ecuadorean people in the face of this fraud attempt," he said.
Lasso contrasted Sunday's fast results with the first round of the election in February, when a final tally took days to come out and his supporters gathered in front of the electoral council to guard against what they said were fraud attempts.
Hundreds of Lasso supporters again swarmed in front of electoral council offices in the capital, Quito, and Guayaquil, waving yellow, blue and red Ecuadorean flags and chanting "No to fraud!" and "We don't want to be Venezuela!"
There were reports of isolated clashes, but protests lost intensity as the night went on and people went home.
