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By Alexandra Valencia and Yury Garcia
QUITO/GUAYAQUIL (Reuters) - Ecuador's presidential race will go to an April 13 runoff if current trends in the count persist, Diana Atamaint, the head of the national electoral council said late on Sunday, as incumbent Daniel Noboa led leftist Luisa Gonzalez by less than 1%.
The rivals also faced one another in 2023, when they fought to win the chance to finish out the truncated term of Noboa's predecessor.
Although polls had predicted Noboa to win, even in a single round, he was barely leading the count late on Sunday, with 44.5% to Gonzalez's 44.1%, with 78.7% of ballot boxes counted.
"If the trend is maintained, Ecuadoreans will return to the ballot box on April 13," Atamaint told a press conference.
The 37-year-old heir to a business fortune, Noboa has said his deployment of the military on the streets and in prisons, among other measures, reduced violent deaths by 15%, damped prison violence and aided the capture of major gang leaders.
But leftist Gonzalez, 47, and Noboa's other 14 first round rivals have called for more efforts to fight the drug trade-related crime that has rocked Ecuador in recent years.
Gonzalez, a protege of former President Rafael Correa, has said she would tackle crime with major military and police operations, pursue corrupt judges and prosecutors, and roll out a social spending plan in the most violent areas.
"This triumph is for you because Daniel Noboa represents fear and we represent hope, change, the hope of transforming the country," Gonzalez told supporters in Quito, the capital.
"We are nearly in a technical tie, with a trend, which is the most important, where we will keep growing in votes and Daniel Noboa will keep falling in votes."
For days, Correa and Gonzalez have been decrying what they called plans to commit election fraud, with Gonzalez singling out Atamaint, saying she had allowed Noboa to ignore campaigning rules.
Noboa did not speak to awaiting supporters in Quito.
He has been embroiled in a long-running spat with his vice president, most recently over whether and how he could take campaign leave.
This week, the constitutional court held invalid two decrees that Noboa used to take campaign leave in the first round, a ruling likely to complicate his ability to name an interim vice president so he can campaign ahead of the run-off.
Noboa unveiled several 11th-hour policies seemingly designed to attract voters, from help for migrants returning from the United States to tariffs on Mexican imports and a trade deal with Canada.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito and Yury Garcia in Guayaquil; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Richard Chang and Clarence Fernandez)
