Has Kabila Won???

With all of the provinces reporting partial results except Kinshasa, it appears that President Kabila is en route to a comfortable re-election. Unless the numbers that have been reported for each province are highly unrepresentative of that province's eventual tally--or the provinces vary greatly in turnout--Tshisekedi will have to sweep Kinshasa to make it close.

The numbers are still very preliminary, and it's possible that there could be surprises in store. This is Congo, where anything can happen. That said, the numbers are not looking good for Tshisekedi.

I ran the numbers two ways. The numbers in black represent the number of votes a candidate might receive if all of the registered voters in a province voted the same way as the voters in the districts that have already reported. The numbers in red represent the number of votes a candidate might receive if the percent of precincts that have reported in for each province mirrors that province's turnout.

	If all registered voters vote the same way the counted voters have, (in 000)			If the percent of districts that have reported so far mirrors the percent of the eligible voters who voted, (in 000)
	Kabila	Tshisekedi	Kamerhe	Kabila	Tshisekedi	Kamerhe
Bandundu	2,204	1,123	54	1,245	635	31
Bas Congo	308	1136	26	175	645	15
Equateur	416	990	81	190	450	36
Kasai Occi	216	2,148	7	120	1,200	6
Kasai Orien	390	2,091	10	214	1,145	5
Katanga	4264	253	47	2,681	159	30
Maniema	720	23	100	433	14	60
North Kivu	494	728	494	271	400	271
Orientale	2520	520	250	1,400	288	140
South Kivu	1120	60	728	727	39	472
TOTAL w/o Kinshasa	12,654	9,072	1,754	7,336	4,975	1,038
As percentage w/o Kinshasa	44%	32%	6.1%	51%	35%	7%
With Kinshasa Votes*	12,962	11,702	2,082	7,483	6158	1366
Percentage With Kin votes	40%	36.5%	6.5%	47%	38%	8.6%

 Turnout would be 100 percent in the red case. In the black case, turnout would appear to be at 50 percent or so.[1] But whether 100 percent of eligible voters voted, or only 50 percent did, Kabila wins handily, by 44 to 32 percent in the first case, and by 51 to 35 percent in the second.

The bottom line is this: Tshisekedi will have to win Kinshasa by a huge margin to pull close to Kabila. If Tshisekedi wins 80 percent of Kinshasa's vote to Kabila's 10 percent (with 10 percent going to other candidates), Kabila will still win handily. Even if Kinshasa has a 100 percent turnout, Kabila will win by 40 percent to Tshisekedi's 37 percent. Any lower turnout figure would only reduce Tshisekedi's vote total, and diminish whatever slender hope he has of catching up.

	Without Kinshasa			With Kinshasa
Candidate	Projection by voters	Projection by district		Projection by voters	Projection by district
Kabila	44%	51%		47%	39%
Tshisekedi	32%	35%		40%	37%

[1] The actual number is probably somewhere between these two extremes. Obviously, not everyone who is registered actually voted. But it appears as if the districts that have reported in so far had fewer votes to count than districts that have not yet reported.
In Katanga, for example, 27 percent of the precincts have reported, but the total number of votes counted represents only 17 percent of eligible voters. If those districts are typical, that would mean only 62 percent of eligible voters turned out. In Bandundu, 17 percent of districts have reported, representing only 9.6 percent of registered voters, for a turnout of 56 percent. And in Kasai Occidental, 15.5 percent of districts have reported in with less than 8 percent of the total registered voters, representing a 49 percent turnout.
Because most observers believe that more than 50-55 percent of registered voters actually voted, the districts that have yet to report must be the districts serving larger numbers of people.