Provincial dynamics in the 2017 national elections in Ecuador

This article focuses on the provincial dimension of national politics in Ecuador. Based on an empirical analysis of the party vote shares for the different elections of February 2017, it aimed at understanding why parties dominate the elections in some provinces while remaining peripheral actors in others. This territorial heterogeneity of the vote in national elections was measured using a set of three quantitative indicators: the electoral success of provincial parties, the provincial-national incongruence of the vote and the provincialization of party systems. This article concludes that the provincial distribution of the votes remains one of the key elements in order to understand national elections in Ecuador and that it relies on a subtle combination of province-specific factors, party characteristics and party strategies.