In 2009 the FMLN had more than 900,000 votes in the legislature and ARENA 850,000. This election the FMLN dropped to 175,000 and ARENA to 295,000.
The legislative elections of February 28 reconfigured the political map in El Salvador. The New Ideas party, which ran for the first time in this election, is the most voted in the legislative elections since 1994. While the traditional parties ARENA and the FMLN fell by up to 79% in votes compared to the last choice.
On February 28, New Ideas garnered more than 1.6 million votes according to preliminary data released by the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE). The votes obtained almost double what on average ARENA and the FMLN obtained in the previous elections. But did the votes that ARENA and the FMLN lost go to New Ideas? How has electoral participation been in the last legislative elections?
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The FMLN began running in elections in 1994. It started with a turnout similar to its rival ARENA: 350,000. As the election progressed it reached 943,000 votes in 2009; year in which he not only won the majority of votes in the legislature but also won the presidency. But in 2012 he began to lose votes; in these legislative elections he lost a little over 100,000. Already in 2018 it had lost half of that flow and has now dropped to 175,000.
“The FMLN has been in decline. In the 2019 presidential election it was a total defeat. This was already a trend that was leading. The FMLN hard vote was withdrawn before the ARENA hard vote; the rest of the votes were volatile “, says Eduardo Escobar, of the organization Citizen Action.
A different picture with its rival ARENA which in 2018 counted just over 800,000 votes. A number that remained in the 2019 presidential elections. The Bukele phenomenon did not touch too much on ARENA this year, but this 2021 the reality was different.
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In the 2018 legislative election ARENA garnered 886,000 votes. Preliminary results of this last election give him 295,000; a 67% reduction in their turnout. “The traditional parties have not made the effort to change the old practices, we have not seen these drinkable and structural changes. (…) Both parties have fallen and are in their greatest decline, even more so the FMLN. This time the population passed bill to them abstaining from voting or transferring their votes to New Ideas “, thinks Eduardo Rosales of the National Foundation for the Development (FUNDE).
Legislative and municipal elections since 1994 have averaged around 44% turnout. These legislative elections had a turnout of 51%, the highest since then.