A cloud of uncertainty lingers over Ecuador's upcoming presidential runoff with political analysts being cautious about the bets.
Andres Arauz, a left-leaning economist endorsed by ex-president Rafael Correa, won 32.72 per cent of the vote in the first round election in February and will face three-time candidate Guillermo Lasso, a former banker who secured 19.74 per cent, in the runoff scheduled for next Sunday.
"I don't think there are certainties about who could win, but certainly there has been a polarization in the population facing the two candidacies," said Katalina Barreiro, professor of political science at Ecuador's Institute for Higher National Studies (IAEN).
The tension created by a mudslinging presidential campaign could dissipate on election day, but the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will remain, according to Barreiro.
The electorate is uneasy due to a lack of solutions to urgent problems such as unemployment, strained healthcare and insecurity amid the pandemic, she told Xinhua.
"That is going to have a great repercussion on the voting decision," said the professor.
Polls showed that Arauz, 36, who served in Correa's cabinet, has a 7-point lead over Lasso, 65, whose career as a banker prompted his opponents to cast him as a member of the elite and out of step with the working class.
Ecuadorian political consultant Decio Machado said marginal preference between the two leads him to "reserve prognosis."
"The polls indicate that there is more or less a technical tie at this point, and everything that is going to happen in the final stretch of the (election) season will be decisive," Machado said.
One thing is certain, he said, the vote will be a litmus test for Correa's political influence.
The former president, who lives abroad and was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption, is backing Arauz to continue the "Citizen Revolution," a political movement Correa spearheaded over a decade in power.
"I don't see that there is capacity for illusion or generating hope in Ecuadorian society on the part of the two candidates," Machado said, "it is evident that we are in a situation of uncertainty."
Many people will simply vote for the candidate they consider least bad, said Machado.
"If voting was not compulsory in Ecuador, we would possibly have a very high abstention rate," he said.
However, polls showed that the number of undecided voters, which was around 35 percent in the first round, has dropped to 8-17 percent.
Some observers say the race is shaping up as a contest between opposite political and economic models -- Arauz proposed strengthening the state's role in economic and social sectors, and Lasso is more of a laissez-faire approach.
The runoff follows a politically tense first-round, as third-placed candidate Yaku Perez, an indigenous activist, lost his runoff chance to Lasso by 32,600 votes.
Claiming voter fraud, Perez mobilized protests for widespread recounts and is calling on supporters to null their votes.
"The scenario is complicated," political analyst Xavier Flores told Xinhua, noting that fraud suspicion has prevented Lasso from altering Perez's supporters, who are largely leftists, while voting null will only have a "marginal" impact on the runoff.
"Voting null not only displaces the voter from a key decision, but can make him responsible, by action or omission, for a government that least represents the interests of the great majority," said Santiago Basabe, political scientist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Ecuador.
Throwing away your vote would be particularly unfortunate in a race "where there is close competition between the finalists and markedly different ideological positions," Basabe said.