Preliminary polls showed that Naib Bukele won the re-election.
Update (February 5, 5:30 am UTC): This article has been updated to include the first official voting data from the TSE.
Bitcoin Salvadoran President Naib Bukele is widely expected to win a second term, with early polling data suggesting his party will win 87% of the vote – although final results have yet to be announced.
The official result is February 5, 5:30 am UTC, from the country's electoral authority, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), shows that the Bukele Nuevas (New) Ideas party has a 31.5% lead with more than 1.1 million votes. Votes have been counted.
New Proposals closed with 1.3 million votes, with just over 110,000 for Farabundo Marti's National Liberation Front (FML) candidate Manuel Flores, and nearly 97,000 votes for National Republican Alliance (Arena) candidate Joel Sánchez.
Earlier CID Gallup exit polls showed Bukele's party with 87 percent of the vote, while Flores and Sánchez got 7 percent and 4 percent, respectively. If Bukele retains the leadership, he will be sworn in for a new five-year term as president and will serve until 2029.
Naib Buquele re-elected president of El Salvador (CID Gallup – Boca de Urna) #EleccionesElSalvador2024 #cidgallup #bocadeurna pic.twitter.com/27LNpVknqj
— CID Gallup (@cidgallup) February 5, 2024
According to Ex Post, Bukele declared victory before any official results were announced. He said internal party data showed he won the election with more than 85% of the vote and at least 58 of the 60 representatives in El Salvador's Legislative Council.
A spokesperson for the country's national bitcoin office told Cointelegraph that the vote for Buckele is expected to be even higher after the official results are released.
Buckele made Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender in El Salvador September 2021.
On February 1, Vice President Felix Ulloa confirmed that Buckel's Bitcoin strategy would not change if re-elected.
The Salvadoran president is known for controlling gang crime. In the year In 2023, Amnesty International criticized Bukkel's leadership as a “shocking step back” in human rights protection, which risks replacing gang violence with “state violence”.
Related: El Salvador's Bitcoin Portfolio Moves to Profits
Buckelew's second term campaign has also been mired in controversy.
Many critics, such as Salvadoran lawyer Alfonso Fajardo, have argued that the country's constitution bars Bukele from seeking a second consecutive term.
“Today is a good day to remember that presidential elections are currently prohibited by the constitution up to 7 times,” Fajardo said when news broke that Bukele had filed for re-election in October 2023.
El Salvador could become the “Singapore of America,” according to VanEck strategy consultant Gabor Gurbach, who expects more investment capital and immigration capital to flow into the country in the coming years.
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Additional reporting by Jesse Coghlan.
