Infighting will weaken indigenous politics in Ecuador

Significance Perez disputes the official election results, which place him third with 19.4% of the vote, behind right-winger Guillermo Lasso, with 19.7%. Perez has claimed electoral fraud stripped him of thousands of votes, denying him the chance to face leftist first-round leader Andres Arauz in April’s run-off. Impacts Lasso’s decision to back out of the agreement to recount the votes will cost him in the run-off. Perez will not endorse Arauz and many of his voters are likely to cast blank votes in the second round. While Pachakutik’s appeal stretches beyond indigenous communities, racial identity, ideology and regional cleavages will limit its growth.

A Taxonomy of Protest Voting

Observers of elections often report that voters have engaged in protest voting. We find that “protest voting” refers to a wide range of behaviors, and we create a taxonomy of these phenomena. Support for fringe or insurgent parties is often labeled as protest voting. Voting theorists have used the term in a completely different way, identifying an unusual type of tactical voting as protest voting. Protest voting also occurs when voters cast blank, null, or spoiled ballots. There are also instances when protest voting is organized and directed by political elites. Finally, several countries provide voters with the option of casting a vote for “None of the Above,” which some see as a form of protest voting. In addition to developing this taxonomy, we discuss the analytical and empirical challenges confronting research on each type of protest voting.