The chairs filled up at Istiqlal headquarters on Wednesday night well before there were enough numbers to make much of.
Party leaders, executive committee members and youth cadres gathered at the old headquarters on Ibn Toumert Avenue after polls closed at 7pm, settling in for the familiar election-night business of waiting, comparing notes and watching for returns from around the country.
Abdeljabbar Rachdi was willing to venture only this much: “We are optimistic about the election results.”
The chairman of Istiqlal’s National Council and member of its executive committee said the party had run a “clean and organized campaign,” relying heavily on direct contact with voters and taking its case to them on the ground.
That, he said, had gone down well with voters.
Whether it went down equally well at the ballot box was another matter, and one the count had yet to answer.
The Balance party has spent the past fortnight canvassing against rivals as well as men and women with whom it has shared government for the past five years. RNI, PAM and Istiqlal went into the campaign as coalition partners; once out on the stump, there was little room for coalition niceties as each made its own pitch for the next five.
Polls closed at 7pm with 38.02% of Morocco’s 15.8 million registered voters having cast their ballots, according to the Interior Ministry. The late hours did much of the lifting. Turnout was only 28.05% at 5pm before gaining almost 10 points by closing time.
