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As of August 2023, the latest opinion polls of diverse media presented a not very contested election in Ecuador with Luisa González Alcívar of the Revolución Ciudadana (RC) political party on top with a considerable advantage over any other candidate. The elections due on August 20, 2023, are extraordinary elections to complete the ordinary executive and legislative terms until 2025. This process called "Muerte cruzada" (Cross death) is a political mechanism in Ecuador when the president is impeached and the National Assembly is dissolved bringing new elections to the country.

Lasso's fall down

Guillermo Lasso, current president of Ecuador, won the 2021 elections in the second round against Andrés Arauz with over 52 percent of the general votes. Nonetheless, after only two years the presidential term of Lasso was stained with corruption, organized crime, and general insecurity. The approval rate of the president presented a steep decline going from over 33 percent in March 2022 to lower than 14 percent as of May 2023.

Intentional homicides and Fernando Villavicencio's assassination

The candidate Fernando Villavicencio was violently assassinated in Quito on August 9th, eleven days away from the elections. Villavicencio's main campaign proposals were achieving security and against police and public institutions corruption. Since 2016, the number of intentional homicides in Ecuador has surged from less than one thousand to approximately 2,500 in five years. In 2022, the South American country ranked among the Latin American countries with the highest homicide rates, passing others with a long history of violence such as Mexico, Belize, and Brazil.