Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, widely credited with pulling his Caribbean country out of a deep economic slump, cruised to a re-election victory on Friday, winning more than enough votes to avoid a run-off.

With 49 per cent of voting stations counted, the central elections board gave Fernandez of the centrist Dominican Liberation Party 53 per cent of the vote, while his nearest rival, Miguel Vargas Maldonado of the centre-left Dominican Revolutionary Party, received 41 per cent.

"I accept and recognise the results of the elections," Vargas, a businessman, said in a speech at his campaign headquarters.

Francisco Javier Garcia, Fernandez's campaign chief, said, "the Dominican people, with their intended votes, have decided not to leave for tomorrow what they could settle today."

Fernandez inherited a crumbling economy in 2004 when he became president for the second time. The collapse of a major bank in 2003 sent inflation soaring, plunged the Dominican government deep into the red and provoked a sharp downturn.

With the help of loans from the International Monetary Fund, Fernandez managed to turn things around, although poverty remains widespread.

The election on Friday that catapulted Fernandez into his third term was marred by violence.

At least eight people, including two ruling party officials, suffered gunshot wounds in the country, a leading Caribbean tourism destination once dominated by authoritarian rulers.

In the rural town of Bonao, 52 miles (83 km) north of the capital, witnesses said people fled a voting station in panic when a congressman who represents Vargas' party shot Candido Caba, a local Dominican Liberation Party leader.

Three others, including a former congressman, were shot and killed in a clash between supporters of Fernandez and Vargas on Wednesday night in Villa Vasquez, about 125 miles (200 km) northwest of the capital, authorities said.

But Fernandez, 54, who was first president from 1996 to 2000 before winning office again in 2004, told reporters after casting his own ballot in Santo Domingo that the voting was largely peaceful.

"It's a democratic fiesta," he said.

Just under six million of the Dominican Republic's nine million people were registered to vote.