It is nearly certain that Nayib Bukele and his Nuevas Ideas party won the presidential and legislative elections earlier this month by a significant margin. I estimate Bukele's popularity somewhere above 70%. Some polls show it far higher than that. Bukele’s political opponents are divided and weak. Victory was not in doubt. So when Bukele announced on the night of 4 February that he had won reelection and that his party had taken 58 of the 60 seats in Congress, it was not overly surprising. For World Politics Review, I pre-wrote my analysis of Bukele’s victory days before it happened because the results were so certain.
It was a violation of democratic norms that Bukele made the announcement without waiting for El Salvador’s electoral tribunal (TSE), but it wasn’t out of character for Bukele. He was, after all, running for an unconstitutional reelection. And he is well known for speaking and tweeting whatever he wants, without concerns about what is allowed.
But then something weird happened: the election results for president took five days to officially announce. And, ten days after the election, the results of the legislative election are still not official. There were flaws with the electronic vote counting process. El Faro obtained recordings of the head of El Salvador's electoral agency claiming the collapse of the electronic system may have been intentional. Physical ballots in the capital went missing. The TSE, which promised a ballot recount, now says they won't do it (and they may not be able to given the lost ballots). Opposition politicians are calling for the elections to be potentially annulled. Every day seems to uncover additional irregularities. For example, here is a document from one voting location showing 265 total votes but only 137 voters showed up to vote. Salvadoran media are collecting other examples where the numbers don't add up or mysterious piles of ballots marked for NI appear but don't seem to have been marked by voters on election day.
El Salvador now has a weird situation where Bukele almost certainly legitimately won the election in the sense that he won the most votes, but he also illegitimately stole it in the sense that he stole votes, manipulated the count, and added to his margin of victory. And he did a pretty lousy job of stealing it given how many errors and flaws have come to light in the past week.
Why would Bukele steal an election that he won?
Here are four theories
Eliminate his opponents in Congress. It's possible Bukele knew he would win the presidency but engaged in electoral cheating to also guarantee an overwhelming victory in the legislature. Bukele wants a large enough margin of victory in the legislature so that there is nearly zero opposition to his policies.
Doubting his own popularity. It is not unthinkable that Bukele wasn't certain of victory and put all of these mechanisms in place to steal the election just in case there was a late surge by opponents.
Exercise control over electoral institutions. Bukele knew he would win this election, but also fears losing future elections. It's easier for his party to get all the mechanisms for future stolen elections in place and test run them while he's still popular and there are lots of voters coming out in support of him.
Embrace the cool dictatorship mentality. Maybe Bukele doesn't care that people know that he stole the election. The stolen election could just be a flex to demonstrate to his opponents domestically and abroad that he is so popular that he can get away with stealing an election and still being proclaimed the democratic winner. The state of exception remains in place.
The response to this isn't simple
Is the OAS going to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter because a president who claims he won 80% of the vote actually only won 65% or 75%? No. Nor should it. Calling out the irregularities is a critical part of election observation, but the problems, as serious as they are, don't seem to meet the criteria of a sharp break from democracy.
That is the bind the region is in right now. We all know Bukele won the most votes, even as there are concerns about the process. His party also likely took a very large majority in the legislature, at least 45 seats out of the 60 and probably a lot more, though 58 is a stretch that will only occur through cheating. This isn't Venezuela where the president cheated by announcing fake results in 2018. Or Honduras where Juan Orlando Hernandez stole reelection in 2017 by a very small margin. Or Nicaragua where Ortega simply banned and exiled all his real opponents so he could hold a fake election. At least, El Salvador isn't comparable to those countries yet. However, it increasingly looks like it may be headed down that path in the years to come.