PRETORIA, May 10 (NNN-SANEWS) — South Africa’s Electoral Commission (IEC) had finalised results from 13,731 of the 22,924 voting stations (59.89%), totaling 8.9 million votes at 6.30pm on Thursday.
“Results from a further 2,577 voting stations had been captured and were awaiting audit and finalization,” the IEC said in a statement.
The province that was leading the way in capturing results was the Northern Cape, where 94.48% of results had been captured, followed by the Western Cape (89.8%), Eastern Cape (85.1%), Mpumalanga (79.96%) and North West (75.47%).
“Provinces with the most results still awaiting capture were KwaZulu-Natal (44.84% outstanding), Limpopo (43.18% outstanding), Free State (33.62% outstanding) and Gauteng (30.86% outstanding),” the IEC said.
Of the 8.9 million votes captured by 6.30pm Thursday, 329,936 (3.70%) were special votes and 120,172 (1.35%) were spoilt ballots.
“Based on the results captured to date, voter turnout was sitting at 65.36% nationally, with the highest turnout reported in Gauteng (71.88%) and the lowest in Limpopo (58.37%),” the IEC said.
Results have been trickling in overnight, and current data shows that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is enjoying an early lead nationally.
Just before 7am on Thursday, the ANC was enjoying a lead of 927,857 (53.35 %) voter support nationally. The party was followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with 480,992 (27.66 %) votes. The red berets, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), were at 133,640 (7.68 %) votes.
Data shows the smaller parties were suffering as the contest seems to be between the ANC, DA and the EFF. — NNN-SAnews