A late burst of voting pushed turnout in Morocco’s legislative elections to 38.02pc on Wednesday, bringing down the curtain on an 11-hour polling day and sending parties into the wait for the count.
At 5pm, with two hours to go, turnout was still at 28.05pc. Nearly 10 percentage points were added before polling stations shut at 7pm.
It had been a much slower affair in the morning. Only 4.23pc of registered voters had turned up by 10am. The figure reached 11.34pc at noon before the afternoon brought more voters through the doors.
The final 38.02pc figure was compiled from returns received from prefectures, provinces and district prefectures across the country, the Interior Ministry said.
Voting went ahead normally across Morocco apart from a few isolated incidents at a limited number of polling stations, according to the ministry.
By Wednesday evening, the queues had given way to the count.
Ballot boxes were opened as soon as polling ended, with representatives of candidate lists present as votes began to be sorted and tallied. Local constituency votes are counted first, followed by those for the regional constituencies.
The paperwork then moves up the chain. Polling stations send their official minutes to central polling offices, which consolidate the votes cast for each list.
Counting committees headed by judges will use those returns to determine the results and declare the winners.
At stake are all 395 seats in the House of Representatives and, beyond them, the balance of power after a campaign in which even the three parties that governed together for the past five years—RNI, PAM and Istiqlal—fought hard for their own share of the electorate.
The campaign ended at midnight on Tuesday. By 7pm Wednesday, the voters had had their say. Now comes the arithmetic .
