What you need to know about the elections in El Salvador

There is no real competition in Sunday's presidential election in El Salvador: Nayib Bukele, the millennial president who reshaped the country with a crackdown on gangs and civil liberties, is expected to win re-election in a landslide.

Legal scholars say Bukele, 42, is violating a constitutional ban by seeking a second consecutive term, but most Salvadorans don't seem to care.

Polls show voters overwhelmingly support Bukele's candidacy and are likely to consolidate his party's supermajority in the legislature on Sunday, extending the leader's unfettered control over all instruments of government for years to come.

“They want to show that they can do this, they want to show that they have the support of the people to do this – and they want everyone to be able to just live with it, regardless of the constitution,” said Ricardo Zuniga, who served as chairman of the United States Department of State. special envoy for Central America under President Biden. “It's a demonstration of power.”

Nearly 80 percent of Salvadorans said yes supported Mr. Bukele's candidacy in a recent survey. The same survey shows that his New Ideas party could win as many as 57 of the 60 seats in the legislature after making changes to the composition of the legislative assembly that analysts say would benefit the ruling party.

Mr Bukele's main selling point is the nearly two-year state of emergency his government imposed after the gangs that had long dominated the streets went on a killing spree in March 2022.

Authorities have since arrested around 75,000 people without due process and indefinitely suspended important constitutional rights.

But the effect was unmistakable. The three gangs that turned the country into one of the most violent places on earth have lost all semblance of power.

“The main pillar on which he has built his popular support is what the government has done in terms of security,” said Omar Serrano, vice chancellor for social outreach at José Simeón Cañas Central American University. “The state of emergency is what people value most.”

Mr. Bukele, descended from a family of Palestinian migrants who arrived in Central America in the early 20th century, was one of eight siblings and half-siblings who grew up in Escalón, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in the capital San Salvador . He attended an elite, bilingual high school.

After working on political campaigns as a publicist, Mr. Bukele entered politics in 2011 and quickly rose to prominence. At the age of 30, he became mayor of Nuevo Cuscatlan, a small town on the outskirts of San Salvador, where he represented the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party.

Three years later he became mayor of San Salvador, a post that was considered a stepping stone to the presidency. In the run-up to the 2019 presidential election, he founded his own New Ideas party but ran as a candidate for a small right-wing party, GANA, to meet legal requirements to compete. He sailed to victory on a promise to break with the corrupt politics of the past.

Once in power, however, he turned to tactics that many saw as a return to the autocratic leadership over which the country had waged a 12-year civil war.

He marched soldiers into the legislative assembly to pressure lawmakers to approve government funding and later replaced an attorney general who was investigating corruption in his government.

In 2021, after winning a supermajority in Congress, his party replaced the top Supreme Court justices, who within months reinterpreted the Constitution to allow Mr. Bukele to once again vie for the presidency.

Yet his appeal has hardly wavered, both at home and among a remarkable contingent of fans across the hemisphere. Politicians from Colombia to Ecuador have pledged to emulate him.

Erlinda Vela Gutiérrez, who runs a stall selling tchotchkes at a market in San Salvador, said she was inundated with tourists asking for paraphernalia emblazoned with the face of the man she called “my beloved president.” She has magnets, mugs, keychains and figurines.

Ms. Vela Gutiérrez, who lives in Las Margaritas, a neighborhood outside San Salvador that was once a stronghold of the ruthless MS-13 gang, said it was not an issue whether Mr. Bukele broke democratic rules.

“If he becomes president ten times, I will accept him ten times,” she said. She said she has already sent her family in Maryland a shipment of “hats, T-shirts, jackets, just from Bukele.”

This election will be the first time Salvadorans living abroad will vote en masse, after the government allowed advance voting on an app. Analysts say the move was intended to capitalize on Bukele's popularity among those migrating to the United States.

More than 140,000 Salvadorans abroad have already voted, compared to fewer than 4,000 in the last election five years ago. Voting in the elections has soared in states with large Salvadoran communities, such as Virginia, California and New York.

The five opposition candidates for president have gained virtually no traction in the polls, including contenders from the right-wing Arena and the left-wing FMLN party, which had dominated Salvadoran politics for three decades.