El Salvador: Bukele's Party Is Ahead in Parliamentary Elections

El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele is poised to gain more political power as his New Ideas Party (Nuevas Ideas) is gaining a wide lead in Parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results.

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However, there is no official data on the number of lawmakers won by New Ideas. El Salvador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) forecasts that the ruling party will take control of Congress.

With 35.21 percent of the tally sheets processed, New Ideas plus its coalition with the Great Alliance for National Unity (NI-GANA) got 561,905 votes for Congress. 

The official vote count leaves behind the far-right-wing the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), both of which have dominated Congress for the past years.

As of early Monday morning, TSE projected ARENA will have 14 lawmakers in Parliament, and the FMLN will have three.

Bukele, who proposed to "get the same old people out of power" throughout his electoral campaign, assured that his party would get at least 53 out of 84 lawmakers.

If the President captures the majority, the NI could approve laws that Bukele wants to implement without the need to reach agreements with other political movements.

On Sunday, over 5.3 million Salvadorans went to the polls to elect 84 lawmakers, 262 municipal councils, and 20 representatives to the Central American Parliament (Parlacen).

It is also estimated that Bukele's party will win a large part of the country's 262 municipalities.