Kenya Elections: Ruto Gains Against Odinga as 90% of votes are Tallied 

Kenya Deputy President William Ruto appears to have now taken a lead over Raila Odinga as more tallied votes trickle in the hotly contested Kenya presidential election.

At 6:19am on Thursday, Citizen TV reported that Ruto had already registered 5,236,045 votes representing 50.11% of total votes tallied by the media house. 

Raila Odinga was in the second position with 5,069,363 (48.52%).

According to Kenya’s electoral body, 12 million votes were cast. 

Kenyan media houses have so far tallied almost 11 million votes. 

Daily Nation which had on Thursday morning tallied less than 10 million votes put Raila in the lead with 51% against Ruto’s 47%. 

Standard Media which has so far tallied over 11 million votes said Ruto had 5,820,290 votes (50.05%) against Raila’s 5,731,475 (49.29%).

The margins remains slim. It would be too early to determine at this stage the president-elect. 

Last night, Raila Odinga was in the lead against his rival Ruto.

The winner of presidential election needs 50% + 1 of the valid votes cast and at least 25% votes in more than 24 counties.

The law requires the electoral body to undertake verification of the presidential election results and declare the president-elect within the seven days.

“We shall endeavour to conclude this exercise at the earliest possible,” said the electoral body, IEBC.  

At the national tallying centre, officials verify transmitted results on form 34As against original form 34As received from polling stations. 

To build trust in the process, the national tallying centre has  five work-stations for verification of results from the returning officers in the presence of presidential chief agents. 

Once verification is complete, the constituency returning officer presents the results to the presidential returning officer for announcement. 

The media houses have been allowed to tally the votes but the announcement of the final results is the mandate of the electoral body.

The post Kenya Elections: Ruto Gains Against Odinga as 90% of votes are Tallied  first appeared on ChimpReports.