Sub-national electoral success of populist parties in Ecuador (2006–2023)

Following the path set by the European literature on populism, this paper analyzes the sub-national dynamics of the electoral success of the Ecuadorian populist party PAIS and its successors. Covering 17 years of populism in Ecuador (2006–2023), I investigate the variation of populism across all 24 provinces for different types of elections (executive and legislative elections, as well as national and provincial ones). This paper aims to demonstrate that populism cannot be considered as a uniform and coherent political movement across the national territory and provides one of the first steppingstone for the study of sub-national variations of populism in the Global South. As a result, I quantitatively explore the electoral success of populist parties in Ecuador over time and per election type, gender and provinces. The analyses are complemented by multivariate models testing for the impact of other political and geographical factors on the electoral performance of populist parties.