A pro-business former mayor of the Guatemalan capital was leading a center-left engineer who billed himself as the candidate of the poor late Sunday in a presidential run-off election marred by low voter turnout.

With 71 percent of the votes counted, conservative Oscar Berger had 53.9 percent, compared to 44.02 percent for his opponent, Alvaro Colom. Berger served as mayor of Guatemala City from 1990 until 1999 and won 29 percent more votes in the capital than his opponent, according to results released by the election commission.

Berger declared himself the race's winner even before early results were released, inviting his opponent to join his administration-to-be. Colom refused to concede the election, however, saying he would wait for more votes to be counted before addressing the media on Monday.

But Oscar Bolanos, the election commission director, said at a late-night news conference Sunday that the election's final results probably won't vary that much from the preliminary results. The commission was not planning to release any more voting information until Monday.

What was clear was that the election failed to strike a chord with most voters. Many polling stations were mostly empty throughout the day Sunday and the country's human rights ombudsman released a statement saying observers had noticed a dearth of voters.

Preliminary results showed that less than 46 percent of registered voters went to the polls. That was in contrast to last month's election, when long lines forced voting centers to stay open for several extra hours and 58 percent cast ballots for presidential, legislative, and local elections.

That race featured the candidacy of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who ran for president with the ruling party, but failed to advance to Sunday's second and decisive second round of presidential voting because he finished a distant third behind Berger and Colom.

"I'm voting to set an example for my children," said Luis Miranda, a 37-year-old accountant who cast his ballot as soon as the polls opened at 7 a.m. "But there are many people who won't vote because the local elections are over."

The lack of a close contest may have deterred would-be voters. Polls leading up to the election have shown Berger, who enjoys the support of the business community, with a lead of at least 15 percentage points over Colom, a former vice economy secretary and ordained Mayan minister.

"I am going to be an honest man with an honest team that's going to be very austere," Berger said amid hundreds of cheering supporters at a victory party. "We don't want to spend more than what's necessary, investing in public health, public safety."

Colom, who had pledged to fight for the country's poor and largely marginalized Mayan majority, said he would make up Berger's advantage in the capital by winning most of the rural provinces, were preliminary results were taking longer to trickle in.

Preliminary results showed that Colom did indeed garner more support outside of the country's urban centers — especially in the largely Mayan west. But it was not enough to overcome his opponent's control of the capital. Berger also got a boast from the majority of voters in the country's southeast.

Voting took place across this country of 14 million with few complaints of irregularities, though Guatemala City police were summoned to polling places in three neighborhoods after receiving reports that assailants were using homemade cannons to fire nails at the tires of arriving cars.

About 1,000 election observers were stationed throughout the country to prevent violence and election fraud.

Rios Montt's 18-month regime during the early 1980s was the bloodiest of a 1960-96 civil war. The 77-year-old former general has been accused of genocide for applying a scorched-earth campaign that killed thousands of civilians suspected of supporting guerrillas battling the army.

Both Berger and Colom ran for president in 1999, but finished well behind Alfonso Portillo, a populist from Rios Montt's party. Portillo's popularity has plummeted amid charges of government corruption and a failure to address skyrocketing crime rates, and term limits bar him from seeking re-election.

The first-round defeat of Rios Montt, who has served as president of the legislature since 2000, means his immunity from prosecution will expire when his term as lawmaker ends next month.

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