Provisional results indicate President Faure Gnassingbe won 1.2 million votes, representing 60.9 per cent of the roughly 2 million votes cast in the tiny country, said Issifou Tabiou, the head of the election body.
Opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, who had earlier accused the ruling party of rigging the election, received 692,584 votes, or 33.9 per cent.
As it became clear that the opposition had lost and Gnassingbe would get a second term, Fabre led a group of around 200 protesters to a downtown square where they were pushed back by anti-riot police who fired tear gas, said witnesses and a police spokesman.
The contentious election is only the second since the death of Eyadema Gnassingbe, who grabbed power in a 1967 coup and ruled for 43 years, only for his son to seize power upon the dictator's death in 2005. The younger Gnassinge went on to win elections that same year that were widely viewed as rigged.