Philippines Live Updates: Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Takes Huge Lead

MANILA — Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the ousted dictator, edged closer to a triumph in the presidential election in the Philippines on Monday as early election data shared by the government put him in a commanding lead over Leni Robredo, his closest rival.

With 70.28 percent of election returns counted as of 10 p.m. Manila time, Mr. Marcos had 23 million votes, more than double Ms. Robredo’s 10.9 million votes, according to ABS-CBN News, a local broadcaster with access to the official election servers. Sara Duterte, the daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte, who is running for vice president in support of Mr. Marcos, also led by a wide margin. She had 18.6 million votes, more than triple her nearest rival, Senator Francis Pangilinan, who had six million votes.

But by the time polls closed at 7 p.m., accounts of alarming irregularities had been reported across the country: malfunctioning voting machines, insufficient numbers of backup machines, complaints that voters had been left off registration rolls, and that their ballots had been tampered with. Still, Mr. Marcos’s lead was so strong that it appeared extremely unlikely that Ms. Robredo could prevail.

The official count begins at 1 p.m. on Tuesday local time, and a winner is expected to be announced in the coming days. It remains to be seen if Mr. Marcos will claim victory before that process is complete.

Human rights activists, intellectuals and hundreds of thousands of young people had opposed Mr. Marcos’s bid for the presidency, fearing that democracy would regress even further under his rule. To many victims of the older Mr. Marcos’s brutal rule, his son’s win is tantamount to an erasure of their own experiences, because his family has spent years distorting their shared memory of the atrocities committed during the martial law era.

If Mr. Marcos wins the presidency, it would be an extraordinary comeback for a family that was hounded out of office more than three decades ago. In 1986, millions of Filipinos, angry at the rights abuses and corruption committed during the Marcos regime, poured into the streets in mass protests known as the “People Power” revolt, forcing the family to flee to Hawaii. They returned after the death of the older Mr. Marcos in 1989, however.

Before the election, every opinion poll had showed that Mr. Marcos would win the presidency and do so with the widest margin in three decades.

Mr. Marcos, known by his boyhood nickname, “Bongbong,” ran on a platform of unity, saying that he “would help Filipinos rise again.” But many of his policy proposals remain thin, and he has accepted few media interviews. He appealed to a public that has grown disillusioned with the country’s brand of democracy and its failure to address the basic needs of its citizens. Poverty is widespread, inequality has widened and corruption remains rampant.

Mr. Marcos served as vice governor, governor and congressman in Ilocos Norte, the family stronghold, for most of the period between the late 1980s and 2010. That year, he entered the national political scene when he was elected senator.