Santo Domingo  - Centre-right incumbent Leonel Fernandez sealed another term with 53.2 per cent of the vote, election officials said Saturday.

With 80 per cent of the vote from Friday counted, election officials said the most serious of six opponents, social democrat Miguel Vargas, took 41 per cent of the vote.

Vargas accepted the results and conceded victory to Fernandez.

Fernandez, 54, avoided a runoff to win a second consecutive term by remaining above 50 per cent in the first-round election. He was elected in 2004 and earlier served a presidential term from 1996- 2000.

Calm reigned during Friday's voting, which took place with 270 election observers in attendance across the Spanish-speaking country, which occupies the eastern half of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, shared with French-speaking Haiti.

A team of observers from the Organization of American States found that some of the Dominican's 13,000 polling stations were late in opening Friday morning, due to logistical problems. There were scattered complaints of attempts to buy identity documents on election day.

Fernandez's Party for Dominican Liberation controls both chambers of Congress. (dpa)