El Salvador 2024 electoral-type events: Presidential and Legislative (Feb. 4), Locals (Mar. 3)

[MRCVzla]

If there's no surprise, incumbent President and notable populist crypto-bro Nayib Bukele will win by "North Korean margins" his controversial and unconstitutional re-election (o what he and his followers calls "second mandate") bid tomorrow. With or without suspects of electoral fraud as the guy is supposedly very popular within Salvadorians due to fix the security problems making pacts with the Maras gangs, but sacrifice multi-party Democracy de-facto as the ARENA and FMLN post-civil war parties are still very unpopular but enough to concentrate a lot of people when they are protesting against Bukele' policies.

Bukele do not reformed the Constitution to secure a legally inmediate re-election bid (both Electoral and Supreme Court -appointed by Bukele's party NI-controlled Legislative- allowed his candidacy, as his ongoing mandate is in "suspension" as he designated his private secretary to hold office for six months before the new term starts)... but did an major electoral and administrative State reform, the size of the Legislative Assembly will be reduced by 84 to 60 seats (the number of seats prior of the post-civil war "peace agreements" in the late 80s) with no more "largest remainders" but constituency-level D'Hondt, so the probabilities of Nuevas Ideas (NI) to get almost all the seats are very high (see below), and also a cut in the number of municipalities, reducing from 262 municipalities to just 44, with accusations of gerrymandering at all, in order to get more effective and equitable budgetary burden.

Six formulas are on the Presidential ballot:
Nayib Bukele/Félix Ulloa (Nuevas Ideas, big-tent populism); both incumbents, around high 60s-low 80% in latest opinion polls.
Joel Sánchez/Hilicia Bonilla (ARENA, right-wing); around 3-4% in opinion polls.
Manuel Flores/Werner Marroquín (FMLN, left-wing); around 2-4% in opinion polls.
Luis Parada/Celia Medrano (Nuestro Tiempo, center-left); around 1-2% in opinion polls.
Javier Renderos/Rafael Montalvo (Fuerza Solidaria, right-wing, splinter of ARENA and GANA) 0-1%
Marina Murillo/Fausto Carranza (FPS, right-wing) 0-1%

In parliamentary polls, NI could get 56-58 seats, with the other parties may allocate the other 2-4 seats (1-2 ARENA, 1 FMLN, 0-1 GANA, 0-1 PDC), NI got 56/84 seats on the 2021 parliamentary election, Bukele's popularity was at least above 70% in pre-campaign polls, and the potential turnout above 80%. Brace yourselves.

More background at Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Salvadoran_general_election

[MRCVzla]

Exit poll/"boca de urna" by CID Gallup (announced by the government' Press Secretary of the Presidency)
Bukele (NI)  87%
Flores (FMLN) 7%
Sánchez (ARENA) 4%

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1754297807450841106

[MRCVzla]

Bukele (aka World's "Coolest Dictator") proclaims himself as the winner before the official preliminary results are known.
https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1754307883586494722

According to our numbers, we have won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes and a minimum of 58 of 60 deputies in the Assembly.

The record in the entire democratic history of the world.

See you at 9pm in front of the National Palace.

God bless El Salvador.

[MRCVzla]

Preliminary results site up some minutes ago: https://preliminar.tse.gob.sv/resultados/dashboard-index-1
For the Parliamentary election: https://preliminar.tse.gob.sv/resultados/dashboard-index-3

22.2% processed (1900/8562 precincts, mosty rural, only 5 precincts counted in San Salvador out from 2215):
NI (Bukele) 1,090,522 (82.9%)
FMLN (Flores) 93,846 (7.1%)
ARENA (Sánchez) 81,102 (6.2%)
NT (Parada) 29,310 (2.2%)
FS (Renderos) 11,388 (0.9%)
FPS (Murillo) 8,587 (0.7%)

[MRCVzla]

70.3% processed (6015/8562 precincts)
NI (Bukele) 1,662,313 (83.14%)
FMLN (Flores) 139,025 (6.95%)
ARENA (Sánchez) 122,926 (6.15%)
NT (Parada) 45,516 (2.28%)
FS (Renderos) 16,317 (0.82%)
FPS (Murillo) 13,432 (0.67%)

[MRCVzla]

Have any results been released for legislative seats or results by department? I'm curious to see how genuine the results are or if there are any patterns of opposition.

I also want to add looking at the results and different media coverage, the sheer amount of support and defensiveness for Bukele online is really absurd. I think it is commendable to bring down murder rates and make El Salvador safe, but I'm shocked at how defensive people seem to be to any criticism of this man.

Here: https://preliminar.tse.gob.sv/resultados/dashboard-index-3
But they only counted 5% of processed minutes for the Legislative elections, the overall count has been stopped due to transmission failures and a total recount it's being held right now for the Legislative election, as well for the missing 30% of the precincts for the Presidential election.

TSE will count vote by vote to define deputies, due to transmission failures
YOLANDA MAGANA TUESDAY 06, FEBRUARY 2024 - 4:00 AM
More than 8,500 ballot boxes will be opened to count “vote by vote” and define the 2024-2027 legislative composition, in addition to counting 29% of the presidential election ballots.

A total of 11,109 voting boxes will be opened by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) after complaints from all political parties due to failures in the system for transmitting electoral results for the elections on Sunday, February 4.

The TSE will begin the final count today based on only 6,015 count records of the presidential election that could be digitized and transmitted; and therefore discarding the manual records that, at 2:12 am, he ordered the Vote Receiving Boards to carry out.

The presiding magistrate, Dora Esmeralda Martínez de Barahona, was the one who announced the opening of the 2,547 ballot boxes with presidential voting ballots and the 8,562 ballot boxes with legislative voting ballots.

The official, who did not accept questions from journalists, did not explain why the final count will be based on the transmitted minutes, discarding the minutes made by hand, which will be replaced by the vote-by-vote count.

Nor did she explain the protocol for the custody of the electoral packages that contain the ballots that were recounted to define the result of the presidential election and the result of the election of candidates for deputies.

Because?
The Court could not explain yesterday why many Vote Receiving Boards (JRV) could not transmit their minutes with the presidential votes and for deputies of the Legislative Assembly; and why results from ballots entered into the system were duplicated. The justices did not answer questions at a news conference.

Only substitute magistrate Marlon Harold Cornejo was the one who requested an exhaustive internal investigation of the failures in the electoral transmission, through a press release.

A technician said it could have been a software programming error.

The “table count” software used in the 2021 elections, when there were 84 deputies, was adjusted in August 2023 after the Assembly reduced the number of deputies, as ordered by President Nayib Bukele. The update was carried out by personnel from the Computer Services Unit (USI), directed by Ignacio Villagrán, and required an update of the new constituencies, the new number of officials and the new formula to define the number of deputies.

In the process, the “cloning technique” was used in order to erase the 2021 system.

An electoral source assured that on Sunday, in some JRVs, there were computers that were not cloned. Another electoral source admitted that the data “is duplicated” but assured that the system “only takes the last one.” The TSE tried to correct the mistake using manual records, but yesterday decided to discard them for the final scrutiny.

The data
One of the contenders, Nayib Bukele, claimed 58 of 60 deputies “at least.” Cid Gallup estimates 54 deputies for Nuevas Ideas, 1 from the PDC and 5 in dispute with the opposition.
3 facts you should know

1.- Where the minutes go
The closing and scrutiny minutes of the JRVs must be packaged and delivered by the JRVs to the Municipal Electoral Board (JEM).

2.- “Full validity”
Of each record, the JRV must deliver a copy to each of the match watchers. The JRV minutes will be the only one that will have “full validity.”

3.- From the JED to the TSE
The JEM will prepare municipal minutes and deliver the minutes to the JED in no more than 16 hours. The 14 JEDs must deliver to the TSE.

Source in Spanish: https://diario.elmundo.sv/politica/tse-contara-voto-por-voto-para-definir-diputados-por-fallas-en-la-transmision

[MRCVzla]

Update with the preliminary/final results, released in TSE' HQs but not yet on their website, 99.3% counted for the Presidential elections, confirms 84.7% for Bukele with almost 2.7 million votes. Turnout: 52.3%

Nuevas Ideas   2,684,364   84.66%
FMLN   202,856   6.40%
Arena   176,621   5.57%
Nuestro Tiempo   64,441   2.03%
Fuerza Solidaria   23,272   0.73%
FPS   19,123   0.60%

Source (in Spanish): https://diario.elmundo.sv/politica/asi-van-los-resultados-presidenciales-2024-con-el-9927-de-actas-escrutadas

TSE' tweet at 99.1% proccessed:
https://twitter.com/TSEElSalvador/status/1755981834419097762

[MRCVzla]

Local elections and PARLACEN elections (the "so called" second round) were held the past weekend with a low turnout below 25%, according to preliminary results at 78% of the processed precincts, Bukele' Nuevas Ideas party is leading in 28/44 municipalities (2 of them in coalition with Democratic Change/CD) being the Capital San Salvador Centro the most notable, GANA leads in 6, Christian Democrat PDC at 4 (including San Miguel Centro or San Miguel Norte), PCN with 3 plus 1 in coaltion with PDC (both PCN and PDC are government' allies), 1 for Fuerza Solidaria and 1 to ARENA. Final results are starting to process since this week.

To recapitulate the final results of the "first round", no excempted of controversy, Bukele got 2.7 million votes (more than 300k of them in the abroad vote), in the Legislative election, NI got 54/60 deputies, PCN 2, PDC 1, ARENA 2 and VAMOS 1, FMLN got kicked out.