El Salvador Election: Bukele and His Rivals Can Register From 1 October
EL SALVADOR · POLITICS
Key Facts
- —The country El Salvador, mainland Central America’s smallest country, had 6.55 million citizens with identity cards valid for voting in June.
- —Why it matters The right-wing ARENA and left-wing FMLN alternated in power for 30 years until Nayib Bukele won in 2019.
- —What happened The electoral tribunal is due to call the vote on Wednesday 30 September and opens registration on Thursday 1 October.
- —The candidates Bukele seeks a third term against ARENA’s Mayteé Iraheta and the FMLN’s Rafael Aguirre, both ratified on 26 July.
- —What it means for you On Sunday 28 February 2027 a single round decides the presidency, with parliament and local councils chosen the same day.
- —Still open Neither party published turnout or vote totals from its July primary, so support inside each party is unknown.
The El Salvador election of 28 February 2027 enters its formal stage this week. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which runs elections, is due to call the vote on Wednesday and open registration on Thursday.
President Nayib Bukele seeks a third straight term against the two parties that ruled for 30 years before him. The right-wing ARENA and the left-wing FMLN chose their tickets back on 26 July, in primaries the investigative site GatoEncerrado called opaque.
What opens on Thursday
Candidates for president and vice-president must register in person at the TSE between Thursday 1 October and Thursday 19 November. Parliamentary candidates may file in person or through accredited party representatives in the same 50-day period, Diario El Mundo reported.
The Electoral Code says registration opens the day after the formal call, which must come at least four months before the vote. Incomplete candidate lists are inadmissible under Article 144 of the code, Infobae reported.
Municipal candidates file separately with departmental electoral boards between 9 and 19 November. Candidates for the parliamentary seats of Salvadorans living abroad register during that same period, the TSE said.
Why this vote looks different
On 31 July 2025 the Legislative Assembly, El Salvador’s parliament, approved constitutional reforms allowing indefinite presidential re-election. The reforms also lengthened the term from five to six years and abolished the runoff, El Diario de Hoy reported.
A transitional clause cut Bukele’s current term short, to end on 1 June 2027. That moved the presidential vote forward from 2029 to the same day as the legislative and municipal elections.
Voters will choose the president, the vice-president, all 60 members of parliament and 44 municipal councils on one day. Under the new rules the ticket with the most valid votes wins outright, with no second round.
In 2023 parliament cut its own seats from 84 to 60 and merged 262 municipalities into 44. The British financial firm EMFI wrote at the time that the changes appeared to benefit Bukele, El Diario de Hoy reported.
Who will register
Nuevas Ideas, Bukele’s party, confirmed him as its candidate on Sunday 12 July, again with Vice-President Félix Ulloa as running mate. He said his government’s course was the first in history “proven to be the right one,” El Diario de Hoy reported.
ARENA, the Nationalist Republican Alliance, governed from 1989 to 2009 and chose former lawmaker Mayteé Iraheta, a 38-year-old lawyer. She is the first woman the party has put forward for president, El Diario de Hoy reported.
Iraheta sat in parliament for Sonsonate department from 2015 to 2021. Her running mate, Verónica Henríquez, ran citizen participation at Santa Tecla city hall from 2015 to 2018.
The FMLN, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, held the presidency from 2009 to 2019 and fields doctor Rafael Aguirre. His background is set out in El Salvador’s Left-Wing FMLN Picks Doctor Rafael Aguirre to Face Bukele in 2027.
His running mate, Madaí Santos, worked more than 19 years as an intensive-care nurse at Rosales National Hospital. She says she lost her job when more than 2,000 health workers were dismissed on 23 December 2025, GatoEncerrado reported.
How the tickets were chosen in July
Both parties held primaries on Sunday 26 July, with members voting online or in person. Each party had only one presidential ticket on the ballot, so members simply ratified it, GatoEncerrado reported.
ARENA named its ticket only in mid-morning on voting day, and some members learned the names on the voting screen. The FMLN presented Santos around noon, after an earlier choice for vice-president, Efraín Benítez, was dropped.
The FMLN said only that its ticket won more than 50% of members’ direct votes, without giving a number. ARENA had not published full results when GatoEncerrado’s report appeared on 28 July.
Acción Ciudadana, a Salvadoran transparency group, reviewed ten parties’ primaries in a report presented on 27 August. None published how many members were eligible to vote or how many actually voted, Infobae reported.
The gap was not limited to the opposition, according to the same report. Bukele’s party, Nuevas Ideas, published percentages but no vote counts, and the small party Vamos did the same.
What the government side says
Bukele has defended the reforms by noting that re-election is allowed in many countries, Bloomberg Línea reported. He has also said that his time in power rests on the support voters gave him at the ballot box.
Published on 24 June, a Central American University (UCA) survey found 87.8% rated Bukele’s seventh year good or very good. The same poll of 1,271 people found 65.3% backed moving the presidential vote forward from 2029, Diario El Mundo reported.
LPG Datos, the polling unit of La Prensa Gráfica, put his approval at 85.5% in a poll published on 2 June. Its February poll had him at 91.9%, and none of his three predecessors topped 72% at a comparable point, ContraPunto reported.
Improved security, pursued under a state of emergency since March 2022, was the reason cited most for his approval in February. The wider background is set out in El Salvador Explained 2026: Bukele’s Model, the Economy and What to Watch.
What the old parties and their critics say
ARENA’s president, Carlos García Saade, rejected the charge that running legitimises Bukele’s candidacy. “We are not legitimising a candidacy, what we are doing is competing,” he told the TCS network, Diario El Mundo reported.
Iraheta has said she recognises the security gains of recent years and would protect them as president. She has since argued that “it is not enough to live without fear of crime,” the Ecuadorian daily El Comercio reported.
Aguirre has said his programme rests on five pillars: the economy, health, education, farming, and tourism, culture and youth. At the party’s formal proclamation on Sunday 20 September, he pledged dialogue, social oversight and more transparency, Diario Co Latino reported.
The FMLN says it will field 748 candidates, with legislative lists in all 14 departments and councils in all 44 municipalities. The opposition holds only three of the 60 seats in the outgoing parliament, two of them ARENA’s, Diario El Mundo reported.
Analyst Ronal Umaña told Diario Co Latino that the El Salvador election could take place under unequal conditions. He questioned the role of the TSE and said both old parties help legitimise the process by running.
What it means for residents and investors
For foreigners living in El Salvador, the calendar is now fixed. Presidential campaigning may begin on Tuesday 27 October and must end on Wednesday 24 February, four days before the vote.
In 2024 Bukele won 84.65% of valid votes, Bloomberg Línea reported. ARENA’s presidential vote fell from 857,084 in 2019 to 177,881 that year, a drop of 79%, Diario El Mundo reported.
El Comercio described the mood before the El Salvador election as low-intensity, with opposition proposals yet to connect with voters. GatoEncerrado wrote in July that polls gave each party about 1%, a figure that could not be independently confirmed.
What comes next
Under Article 172 of the Electoral Code, parliamentary campaigning may start two months before the vote and local campaigning one month before. Once registration closes, only parties and coalitions in the race may run campaign advertising, Infobae reported.
Ratification is not yet registration, and the TSE has not accepted any 2027 ticket so far. Nor do two opposition tickets mean a united opposition, because ARENA and the FMLN are running separately.
When primaries closed on 29 July, El Diario de Hoy counted three confirmed presidential tickets: Nuevas Ideas, ARENA and the FMLN. How many members chose the two opposition tickets remains unknown, because neither party has published turnout.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is El Salvador’s next presidential election?
On Sunday 28 February 2027, together with elections for parliament and municipal councils. A 2025 constitutional reform moved it forward from 2029.
What happens when registration opens on 1 October?
Presidential and vice-presidential candidates must file their papers in person at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal by 19 November. Incomplete candidate lists are rejected.
Who is running against Bukele?
ARENA, on the right, fields Mayteé Iraheta with Verónica Henríquez. The FMLN, on the left, fields Rafael Aguirre with Madaí Santos.
Is there a runoff in El Salvador?
No. Since the 2025 reform, the ticket with the most valid votes wins in a single round.
This article was drafted with automated assistance and reviewed before publication. How we use AI · Report an error
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