The Arabist

The Arabist

By Issandr El Amrani and friends.

The early results are in... and it's not good

(This was written earlier this morning, to be updated).

With about half of the polling stations reported, it looks like Egypt's presidential elections will go to a second round between Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood and former general Ahmed Shafiq. This is the most polarizing outcome possible, and is particularly unfortunate as the other candidates are not trailing too far from these two poll leaders — Aboul Fotouh and Sabbahi in particular amount together for about 40% of the vote, while Mursi is unlikely to get much higher than 30%. More about this later — I have to run off to a meeting but wanted to signal some good sources of info and raw data:

ArcGIS - EgyptVote2012 - a GIS color mapping of Mursi, Shafiq and Aboul Fotouh votes (click the middle icon on the sidebar for details and to cycle through the candidates).

#EgyPresElex - Google Docs - Iyad al-Baghdadi's amazing effort to note the results as they come in, per governorate.

And finally pics from Jonathan Rachad from the election itself: