ECZ says 61.4%, CSOs say 57.9%: Zambia's unexplained election vote count gap

ECZ chairperson Mwangala Zaloumis declared Hichilema president elect in the early hours of August 18, on vote totals of 2,965,326 for Hichilema and 1,856,217 for Mundubile, and quoted his share as roughly 61.4 percent, meeting the constitutional 50 percent plus one threshold. Those two totals, measured against each other alone, work out to about 61.5 percent. But they have not moved since, and ECZ has not followed the declaration with a gazetted final result. As of August 25, ECZ's own results portal (results.elections.org.zm) shows all 14 candidates at "NaN%" with 0 of 226 constituencies reporting, despite being labelled "Approved Results," and its main results page still shows nothing newer than 2021. The only fuller breakdown available is unofficial. The Zambian Economist's results tracker, last updated August 24, puts Hichilema's share against the full field of 14 candidates at 60.49 percent and Mundubile's at 37.87 percent, with 12 other candidates' results still marked pending. That is the figure to compare against the CSO consortium's Parallel Vote Tabulation, not the roughly 61.4 percent quoted on declaration night, since the PVT is also a full-field, all-candidate estimate. | Figure | Source | Hichilema | Mundubile | |---|---|---|---| | Declaration night, top two only | ECZ, Aug 18 | ~61.5% | ~38.5% | | Reconstructed, full field | Zambian Economist tracker, Aug 24 (unofficial) | 60.49% | 37.87% | | PVT estimate | CSO Consortium, released Aug 24 | 57.9% | not published | | Gap to PVT, using the full-field figure | | 2.6 points | | Reasons to doubt the provisional figure: it is still provisional. The count it came from was paused nationwide on August 14, after isolated violence, including the death of a polling official in Matero Constituency, and reports of ballot paper theft. ECZ lifted the suspension the same day but has yet to gazette a final tally more than a week later. Mundubile has alleged that result forms from polling stations were altered before