MEXICO CITY - El Salvador's presidential race appeared headed to a razor-close finish Sunday, a surprising turn after opinion polls had given the governing party's candidate, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a double-digit lead.
With roughly half the vote counted, Mr. Sánchez Cerén, the vice president and a former education minister, was in a virtual tie with his opponent, Norman Quijano, a two-term mayor of San Salvador.
Although El Salvador is troubled by gang violence and anemic economic growth, Mr. Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla commander, had been expected to win convincingly on the strength of the government's popular social programs, including handouts of school uniforms and supplies to poor children.
Mr. Sánchez Cerén's party, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, arose out of the left-wing guerrilla movement that fought the government in the 12-year civil war that ended in 1992, but the party has governed from the center-left since it first won the presidency in 2009 under President Mauricio Funes. Mr. Funes, a former television journalist who was not a member of the rebel movement, is barred from running again.
A number of factors may have hurt Mr. Sánchez Cerén's support in the final days, said Hector Silva Avalos, a Salvadoran journalist and research fellow at American University, including vivid coverage of street protests in Venezuela intended to scare voters away from the left.
Mr. Funes may also have hurt support for the vice president by making aggressive attacks against Mr. Quijano's party, the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, over a corruption scandal, Mr. Silva said.
On the stump, Mr. Sánchez Cerén, 69, has staked out moderate positions, running on the accomplishments of the existing government.
The party 'is more pragmatic in that they have had five years in power,' said Michael Allison, an expert on Central America at the University of Scranton.
On security, he has sidestepped the most contentious issue, a truce between street gangs that has reduced El Salvador's murder rate.
Under the 2012 truce, which the government does not openly support, gang leaders have won better prison conditions and ordered gang members to stop killing one another. But El Salvador's murder rate is still one of the highest in the world while extortion continues unabated.
Mr. Quijano, 67, has condemned the truce, arguing that the government has negotiated away the legitimacy of the state, Mr. Allison said.
Under Mr. Funes, El Salvador has had generally good relations with Washington, although both Congress and the administration have pushed the government to crack down more effectively on organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption.
As many as two million Salvadorans live outside the country, most of them in the United States; they sent an estimated $4.2 billion back to relatives last year.
Security was uppermost on voters' minds, regardless of whom they voted for.
'We need somebody here to enforce some rules,' said Rubia Figueroa, 55, a government employee who voted for Mr. Quijano. 'The problem is that the government that is here now, they made deals with the gangs, and that shouldn't be.'
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