Sunday, May 30, 2010

Colombia Election early results

The polls closed just under one hour ago and we already have 31.9% of the votes counted that show:
Juan Manuel Santos has 46.8% of votes
Antanas Mockus has 21.43% of votes
We're told that by 8pm local time (9pm New York time) around 90% of votes are expected to have been counted. We'll update this post as the evening progresses.

UPDATE
: The scores are now 46.64% Santos, 21.61% Mockus, 10.35% Vargas, 9.47% Petro, 5.75% Sanín with 72% tallied in what's called the "precount" (i.e. official quick count and supposedly very accurate forecast). If you're interested in helping crash the official website, the link is here.

UPDATE 2:
Now 79.86% of the precount done, with 46.54% Santos, 21.68% Mockus, 10.33% Vargas, 9.38% Petro, 5.86% Sanín. It has to be said that these numbers are very different from all opinion polls carried out pre-election that had Santos and Mockus in a technicial dead heat for the last two weeks of campaigning (here's the link to charts showing the last set of main polls from last Sunday). Let's just leave it at that for the time being.

UPDATE 3: 91.8% of the precount is now done and I think we've got the picture by now: 46.57% Santos, 21.55% Mockus, 10.24% Vargas, 9.22% Petro, 6.05% Sanín. There are going to be a lot of questions asked about this vote, not least from the observers that have already made observations of irregularities.

UPDATE 4: We'll make this the last update, as with 95.34% the result is now all-but set in stone. 46.58% Santos, 21.50% Mockus, 10.19% Vargas, 9.18% Petro, 6.11% Sanín.