Salvadorans head to the polls once again

Salvadorans return to the ballot box tomorrow for the third time in four years to select members from ten different political parties for the legislature, mayoral posts, and PARLACEN. As usual, the FMLN and ARENA stand apart from the country's other political parties. And, for the most part, polls have put the FMLN comfortably ahead of ARENA.

Given the difficulty of polling in El Salvador and the fact that nearly forty percent of likely voters have no preference at this point, it's a little difficult to project what the FMLN's advantage will actually look like, if they have one, when the final votes are tallied and the seats distributed. Either way, it does not look like any political party will have a majority in the next legislature, meaning that the FMLN will have to once again negotiate with those they perhaps would prefer not to.

In the election for San Salvador, the FMLN’s Nayib Bukele looks like the comfortable favorite against ARENA’s Edwin Zamora. It used to be said that San Salvador mayor was the stepping stone to the presidency (Jose Napoleon Duarte and Armando Calderon Sol), but in recent years the shine has fallen off so that one can barely say with a straight face that it is even a stepping stone to becoming a presidential candidate (Hector Silva, Norman Quijano).

To no one's surprise, violence and the economy are the top two concerns of Salvadoran voters. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a recent spike in violence this month, or at least the last few days, with homicides reaching twenty per day.