Saturday, May 17, 2008 - 02:30
AFP News Briefs ListPresident projected to win re-election in Dominican vote
President Leonel Fernandez has held a comfortable lead in his re-election, exit polls showed, after voters across the Dominican Republic cast ballots in a largely peaceful day of voting.
Fernandez was forecast on Friday to win with 56 percent of ballots, easily avoiding a run-off vote, an official with the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland told AFP.
Miguel Vargas Maldonado of the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party obtained 39 percent of the vote, said a firm official, Andrew Claster.
The exit poll reflects a similar outcome from opinion polls published before the election showing Fernandez with a wide lead.
Claster said Fernandez "won in every region" of the country, a mountainous Caribbean country of nine million residents.
Official results are expected between 0100 and 0200 GMT, election officials said.
Fernandez, a progressive liberal who grew up in New York City, has led the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti to the west, from 1996 to 2000 and 2004 to 2008.
The voting took place in a climate of "order and good organization," despite isolated incidents of violence, said Jose Octavio Bordon, head of the team of some 200 observers with the Organization of American States.
"What we have seen is order and good organization," Bordon told reporters.
At least three people were killed late Wednesday in a shoot-out between supporters of Fernandez and Vargas ahead of the vote.
Political violence marred 2006 midterm elections when eight people were killed, while on the day Fernandez was elected in 2004, six people were killed in politically charged violence.
Images
Dominican President Leonel Fernandez delivers a speech after voting at a polling station on May 16. Fernandez has held a comfortable lead in his re-election, exit polls showed
© 2007 AFP Rodrigo Arangua
