Funes won the election with 51.3% of the vote and became the first leftist president of El Salvador.

[1] The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front nominated Mauricio Funes as its presidential candidate and Salvador Sánchez Cerén as his running mate.

The Nationalist Republican Alliance nominated Rodrigo Ávila and Arturo Zablah.

[2] In the same direction, the National Coalition Party, which had nominated Luis Tomás Chévez, also withdrew its candidate a few days later.

A poll from mid September 2008 gave Funes 29.2% and Ávila 26.1%, while Tomás Chévez (PCN) got 1.9%.