Florentino Perez is heading for a landslide victory in his bid to be re-elected as Real Madrid president according to exit polls conducted on Sunday.
A poll run by Spanish sports daily Marca showed that of 1300 club members who had voted on Sunday, 1,216 said they had given their support to Perez, 51 to former president Lorenzo Sanz and 33 to third candidate Arturo Baldasano.
Perez was already reported to have gained 11,034 postal votes from the 65,197 club members entitled to vote in the election, while Baldasano had garnered 34.
Sanz, who had tried to have the election postponed because of what he said were irregularities in the way Perez had collected postal votes, had registered none.
Real said that there was a much higher than expected turn out for Sunday's poll with 20,165 members casting their votes up until 1700 GMT, an 80 per cent increase on the same point in the last election.
The club said that polls would remain open for an extra hour until 1900 GMT to accommodate the increased number of voters, with final results expected three hours later.
Perez, who won a surprise victory over Sanz four years ago, was in confident mood.
"I would be very surprised if I lost," he told sports daily AS on Sunday.
"The club members know what my aims are and they know that if they support me Real Madrid will construct a team that will make history by recruiting the best players in the world every year."
Perez made much of his proven ability to bring the leading names in world football such as
Ronaldo,
Zinedine Zidane and
David Beckham to Real during his election campaign.
He also said that he had solved the club's financial problems and would turn the Bernabeu into the best stadium in the world.
He made no promises about which new players he might sign, but has admitted that he has been negotiating with European champions Porto to bring in defender Ricardo
Carvalho and midfielder Costinha.