Kenyan Election Update: William Ruto Overtakes Raila Odinga As IEBC Count Hits 7 Million Votes

By Our Correspondent 

Nairobi – A day is a long time in vote tallying, and one just needs to monitor the results from the Kenyan presidential election to confirm this.

Within hours of vote tallying at the Bomas of Kenya, the National Tallying Centre for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), two leading presidential candidates have switch the lead, pointing to how tight the race is, and to the possibility of a rerun.

The latest results from the official IEBC tally as at 09:55am indicate that Ruto is now in a lead, with nearly half of the total votes cast on Tuesday, August 09, 2022.

By the time we filed this report, a total of 7,043,561 votes had been tallied. These were from 141 of 291 constituencies that make up Kenya.

Of these votes, William Ruto of UDA and the Kenya Kwanza Coalition had a share of 3,609,736 votes, equivalent to 51.25 per cent of what has so far been tallied.

Former Prime Minister Raila Amollo Odinga of the Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Coalition had managed 3,387,109 votes, translating in 48.09 per cent of the total votes tallied so far.

By publication time, Prof George Wajackoyah of Roots Party had garnered 30,527 votes or 0.43 per cent of what the IEBC had tallied as official and verified election results.

David Mwaure Waihiga of Agano Party was trailing in the four-man contest, having just 16,189 votes or 0.23 per cent.

It should be noted that one needs 50 per cent plus one of the valid votes cast and at least 25 per cent of the votes in more than 24 counties to be declare the winner of a presidential election.

In our previous report, Raila Odinga was way ahead of William Ruto.

Odinga’s running mate Martha Karua even told Azimio party leader at KICC that the coalition party’s tally indicates that Raila Odinga has won the election but the party has no powers to announce him as president-elect.

Meanwhile, official and verified results from the constituencies continue to be released by the IEBC.