President projected to win re-election in Dominican vote

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

SANTO DOMINGO (AFP) — 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...