Cairo: Around 8.5 million Egyptians cast their ballots in this week’s second stage of the parliamentary polls, or 29.8 per cent of the registered voters, the election commission said on Wednesday night.
Invalid votes cast in the stage held in 14 of Egypt’s governorates accounted for 6.05 per cent of the ballots cast, the commission’s head Ayman Abbas told a press conference.
Turnout in last month’s first round, held in the 13 others, was officially put at 26.5 per cent.
The commission confirmed unofficial results that Love of Egypt, an alliance loyal to President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, has won all the 120 seats reserved for party-based slates in the two phases of the election.
The bloc, made up of secular political parties, businessmen and ex-government officials, has already gained all the 60 seats that were up for grabs for party-based slates in the first stage.
Abbas said that nine out of the 222 seats, which were at the centre of individual competition in the second stage of the election, have been won. This means that the 213 seats will be again at stake in run-off vote scheduled for December 1 to 2.
Egypt’s electoral mixed system allocates 80 per cent of parliament’s elected 568 seats for individual candidates and the remaining 20 per cent for political parties based on the winner-takes-all absolute list system.
The president has the right to appoint 28 more members in parliament.
The new legislature will be Egypt’s first since mid-2012 when the Constitutional Court dissolved the Islamist-led assembly.
