Election Results: 55 percent of the votes are in, IEC aiming for 90 percent by midnight

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) provided an update on the results capturing process on Tuesday evening, 2 November. The Commission said earlier that it hopes to capture at least 90 percent of the vote by the end of today.

READ: 50% of votes counted: View all national, provincial, and metro results here

IEC PUSHING TO REACH 90%

At the latest briefing from the National Results Operation Centre (ROC) in Tshwane, the IEC said that 55 percent of the 64 502 results expected had been finalised.

The Northern Cape continues to lead the way as the province with the most ballots counted – 89 percent of the sparsely populated province’s results have been successfully captured.

The Western Cape follows with 72 percent and the Eastern Cape is third with 70 percent.

“The rest of the provinces completion rate range between 37 and 67 percent,” said the IEC.

Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo said that at the capturing level 78 percent of the votes are already in the system waiting to be scanned and audited – these ballots are not being physically counted anymore.

READ: How the IEC counts votes, declares results

“We are still pursuing the target of reaching the 90 per cent still in the course of tonight,” said the CEO.

In addition, 94 municipalities across South Africa have successfully completed submitting their votes. “We will spare no effort that the majority of the of 163 municipalities are completed within the planned time.”

At an earlier briefing, the Commission said it expects to finalise 90 percent of the vote by Tuesday night and the remaining 10 percent would be completed within 24 hours.

If everything goes according to plan the Commission will declare the results of the elections on Thursday, 4 November.

Mamabolo added that the loadshedding – which is currently underway – is a concern because it has an impact on the IEC’s ability to do things quickly. However, he said the Commission had discussions with Eskom “that sought to insulate certain stations.”

FOLLOW THE LIVE RESULTS: https://results.elections.org.za/dashboards/lge/#