Early polling results have indicated that Ibrahim Mohamed Solih is leading the Maldives Democratic Party's (MDP) primary election, with a near double the amount of votes collected by his contender.
The competitive primary election was held in Maldives on Saturday to determine the party's presidential candidate for the presidential election to be held in September of this year. President Solih and Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed ran for the party's presidential ticket.
Nearly half of the votes cast in the 249 polling stations have been count so far. According to MDP's election committee, 19,800 votes from 132 vote boxes have been counted so far. The results show Nasheed received approximately 6,000 votes while President Solih received nearly double that amount, with approximately 12,000 votes.
President Solih has maintained a steady 60 percent of the votes from nearly all ballot boxes since results started to be announced. He leads the election with 67 percent of the counted votes, which are from over half the polling stations.
It is unlikely that President Solih will lose the election now, even when the rest of the votes are accounted for; some of the polling stations that have had their results announced were from islands with a higher population, and a majority of them voted for the incumbent president.
President Solih's campaign team is confident they will win. He has already started receiving congratulations as well.
A total of 57,000 MDP members had the right to vote in this election.
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