Antonio Saca of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party won the election with 57% of the vote, avoiding the need for a run-off on 2 May.

However, pre-vote opinion polls consistently placed both of them far behind the two leaders: The election was monitored by 270 international observers and El Salvador's own Tribunal Supremo Electoral, an institution created in 1992 to reform and validate the country's electoral system.

The U.S. government under George W. Bush interfered in the elections[1] by threatening a deterioration of the bilateral relations in case of a victory by FMLN's candidate Schafik Handal.

Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich, stated that the U.S. government was "concerned about the impact that an FMLN victory could have on the commercial, economic, and migration-related relations of the U.S. with El Salvador.

Saca announced his intention to seek reconciliation with the opposition FMLN, in an effort to heal old divisions from the country's violent past.