On Sunday, Ecuador’s National Electoral Council announced the results of the runoff election for the 2025 to 2029 presidential term. Incumbent president Daniel Noboa emerged victorious, earning 55 percent of the vote, while his opponent, Luisa González, trailed behind with 44 percent of the vote. González immediately declared electoral fraud, citing a series of irregularities including Noboa’s declaration of a “state of exception” in seven strategic provinces two days before the elections. Now the world is asking: What scenarios are emerging in Ecuador given the country’s deepening political polarization?

Two weeks ago, during the final stretch of the runoff campaign, US president Donald Trump privately received Noboa at Mar-a-Lago. While the details of that meeting have not been made public, Noboa appears to have received the “green light” to accelerate the country’s authoritarian drift. Following this meeting, a series of actions by the Noboa government evidenced this turn. Although Trump stopped short of endorsing Noboa explicitly, the mysterious meeting symbolized Noboa’s adoption of the “Trump Way”: a “right-wing populist” style that relies on blackmail as its central tool. Noboa left the meeting promising that the United States would exclude Ecuadorians from mass deportation lists — something Washington never confirmed — a critical issue for a country in which a significant percentage of the population receives remittances from abroad, especially from the United States.

The threat of mass deportations was instrumentalized to influence the vote. Noboa exploited the fear that Ecuadorian migrants would end up in detention centers like Guantanamo or prisons in El Salvador — thus jeopardizing the crucial flow of remittances. This blackmail, although subtle, struck a nerve: Ecuador has been a producer of migrants for decades, and the United States has long been the most sought-after destination.