Museveni leads with 76% in second set of provisional results
Uganda’s incumbent President Yoweri Museveni has maintained a lead in the country’s presidential election, according to the second set of provisional results released by the Electoral Commission (EC) on Friday morning.
Announcing the update at 9:30 am local time, EC chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama said results had so far been received from 22,758 polling stations, representing 44.85% of the country’s total 50,739 polling stations.
Based on the partial tally, Museveni, the flag-bearer of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), has secured 3,960,438 votes, accounting for 76.25% of the valid votes counted so far.
His closest challenger, opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, popularly known as Bobi Wine of the National Unity Platform (NUP) has garnered 1,312,047 votes, or 19.65%.
The remaining candidates trail far behind. Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) candidate James Nathan Nandala Mafabi has received 108,301 votes (2.08%), while Gregory Mugisha Muntu of the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) has polled 29,504 votes (0.57%). Other candidates each remain below one percent of the vote.
Justice Byabakama said a total of 5,323,779 votes had been received so far, representing 24.59% of the 21.6 million registered voters on the national voters’ register. Of these, 5,194,338 were valid votes, while 129,441 ballots were declared invalid, about 2.43% of votes cast. Spoilt ballots stood at 17,281.
The Electoral Commission said it would continue to release provisional results at regular intervals, with the next update scheduled for 2:00pm on Friday.
The latest figures is a sharp increase in Museveni’s lead compared with the first set of provisional results released late Thursday night, which were based on returns from just 133 polling stations, or 0.26% of the total.
The final results are expected to be announced within 48 hours, once tallying from all polling stations is complete.
This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
