Its traditional support basis has been amongst the landowning classes, as well as merchants and artisans and it tended to favour a unitary structure rather than federalism.

Whilst a member of their party was not elected the Conservatives endorsed the victorious José María Velasco Ibarra in 1933 and supported him again as part of the alliance to oust Carlos Alberto Arroyo del Río after the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War and subsequent treaties.

[2] In 1956, they were part of the coalition backing victorious candidate Camilo Ponce Enríquez who assumed the Presidency, although the validity of the result was disputed by opposition groups and his cabinet was dominated by Liberals as a compromise.

[6] A more radical Christian tendency also existed in the form of the Frente Anti-Comunista de Defensa Nacional (FADN), an anti-communist militia group active during the late 1940s.

[8] By the 1980s, both the Conservatives and Liberals were junior partners in the Frente de Reconstrucción Nacional coalition of León Febres Cordero, which was dominated by the Social Christian Party.