Provisional results suggest a tight presidential race in Kenya between Deputy President William Ruto and Raila Odinga, a former prime minister.
Voting on Tuesday was largely peaceful but the turnout was low, with only 30 per cent of the registered 22 million voters showing up as of noon (09:00 GMT), six hours into the vote. By 4pm (13:00 GMT), that had swelled to 56 percent well short of the 80% in the last election five years ago.
With more than 90% of results posted from thousands of individual districts, local tallies of the raw data suggest little separates the pair. .
Tuesday’s vote followed a campaign dominated by debates about living costs, unemployment and corruption.
A largely peaceful election day was marred by logistical delays and a failure of these identification kits in some parts of the country.
At his latest briefing, Mr Wafula Chebukati, Head of the Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission (IEBC) said the commission had received 97% of presidential results sent in electronically, but official tallying would not begin until the physical results were received for verification.
The two frontrunners in the presidential race are seasoned politicians. Mr Odinga, 77 – a long-serving opposition leader, nicknamed Baba (“father”) by his supporters – is running for president for a fifth time.
Mr Ruto, 55, who has tried to emphasise his connection with ordinary Kenyans by calling himself a “hustler”, is taking his first stab at the presidency.
Two other candidates – David Mwaure and George Wajackoya – are also in the race.
Outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta is backing Mr Odinga, a foe turned ally, to succeed him, after a falling out with Mr Ruto.
After counting the votes, local officials take a photo of the final tally sheet and send the image to both the constituency and national tallying centres.
The media, political parties and civil society groups have been compiling their own tallies using these final results declared at the more than 40,000 polling stations.
But only the electoral commission can declare the winner of the presidential election after verifying the physical and digital forms sent to the national tallying centre. It has seven days to announce the result.
“Transmission of results has started,” Chebukati told reporters on Tuesday evening.
According to the IEBC’s website, results had been collected from 95.6 percent of the 46,229 polling stations across the country’s 47 counties, as of Wednesday morning.
About 200 electronic voter kits failed, of a total of more than 46,000, the commission said.
Local newspaper The Nation and other organisations, including the National Churches of Kenya, are observing parallel tallies.
Some reports indicate that Ruto has won in polling units where Kenyatta and Odinga’s running mate Martha Karua voted, but both candidates are going neck and neck in the overall race.
The IEBC is expected to wait for physical copies of Form 34-A, the results form from the polling stations, to be delivered to the National Tallying Centre for verification and computation before any results are announced.
That is not likely to happen till Thursday at the earliest, pundits said.
To win the presidency, a candidate needs 50 percent of the vote in general, as well as 25 percent in at least 24 counties.
