El Salvador: Nayib Bukele expected to win easy second term as voting underway

This comes as a dramatic turnaround in the country’s once-sky-high levels of violence.

Bukele, 42, faced little in the way of organized opposition and enjoys one of the highest favorability ratings in the region, regularly polling above 70 per cent in independent surveys.

His supporters laud the crackdown on criminal gangs in the country that resulted in a dramatic fall in the murder rate, once the highest in the world.

But the mass arrests – El Salvador now has the world’s highest incarceration rate – have also triggered outcry from human rights groups, who allege Bukele’s government of detaining innocent people and subjecting prisoners to dehumanizing conditions behind bars, including torture, according to CNN.

The dissonance has elevated the election in this small Central American state to a broader referendum on the extent that voters are willing to relinquish basic liberties in exchange for relative peace and safety.