All eyes on KZN

2004-04-16 08:38

Pretoria - With just over 89.34% of votes captured by early Friday morning, the African National Congress has nearly garnered 70% of them.

But all eyes are now on KwaZulu-Natal where the Inkatha Freedom Party with the backing of its alliances hope to sneak a victory from the ANC.

With the preliminary count updated at 6:30 the ruling party was heading the national race with 9,52 million of the votes counted, which translates into 69.64% - continuing to make gains on its apparent two-thirds majority.

The Democratic Alliance was second in line with 1,74 million or 12.76%, followed by the Inkatha Freedom Party with 851,767 or 6.23% and the United Democratic Movement with 316,531 or 2.31%.

The Independent Democrats with 250,077 votes or 1.83% have just beaten the New National Party into fifth position which had 247,651 votes or 1.80%.

The African Christian Democratic Party are seventh in the running with 1.66% followed closely by the Freedom Front Plus with 0.96%. The United Christian Democratic party, with 0.75% has nudged the Pan Africanist Congress down into 10th position with 0.73%.

The race for top position was still on in KwaZulu-Natal, with the ANC leading with 45.96%. The IFP had 35.88% and its alliance partner, the DA, had 10.15%. The IFP's other alliance partner, the Freedom Front Plus, has 0.36% of the vote.

In the other contested provinces, the Western Cape - traditionally NNP territory - the ANC leads with 46.11% of the captured votes, the DA 26.92%, the NNP 9.44% and the ID 7.97%.

The ANC held 66.04% of the vote in Gauteng, and the DA 22.67. The IFP in third position had 2.54% in the province.

The ruling party held 80% in the Eastern Cape, 81.56% in the Free State, 86.38% in Mpumalanga, 68.75% in the Northern Cape, 89.68 in Limpopo and 81.45% in the North West.

Watch the provisional results of the national and provincial elections as they come in on News24.com

- SAPA