Closer look at Congo preliminary vote tally raises questions
Guest blogger Jason K. Stearns finds some surprises in the preliminary vote tally from Congo's Nov. 28 presidential elections; final results are expected Friday.
Supporters of Congolese opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi flash victory signs near their candidate's headquarters in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Thursday. Congo is tense as its people await the outcome of last week's disputed election, with partial results making victory all but certain for incumbent Joseph Kabila.
Jerome Delay/AP
Yesterday we got the fifth installment of election results. The election commissioner says we are now at 89,29% of total votes. While they did not want to declare a winner until Friday (they have postponed the results), it is virtually impossible for Tshisekedi still to win. That is, if these results are correct.
By my back-of-the-envelope calculus, Kabila now has 8,353,573 votes and Tshisekedi 5,927,528, with only around two million votes left to count.
So what does a preliminary analysis of the votes that have been counted say?
Here are the current figures by province, with turnout and Joseph Kabila's percentages for both rounds of 2006 elections.
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| Province | Kabila | Kabila 2006 1st round | Kabila 2006 2nd | Tshisekedi | Turnout |
| Bandundu | 63% | 3% | 40% | 20% | 57% |
| Bas-Congo | 20% | 14% | 25% | 74% | 56% |
| Equateur | 10% | 2% | 2,8% | 36% | 51% |
| Kasai-Occ | 15% | 11% | 23% | 79% | 50% |
| Kasai-Or | 20% | 36% | 32% | 71% | 50% |
| Katanga | 90% | 77% | 93% | 7% | 68% |
| Kinshasa | 30% | 14% | 32% | 64% | 68% |
| P Orientale | 62% | 70% | 79% | 14% | 62% |
| Maniema | 87% | 90% | 98% | 3% | 57% |
| North Kivu | 37% | 77% | 96% | 22% | 62% |
| South Kivu | 45% | 95% | 98% | 9% | 69% |
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