Islamists Win Combined 70% of Egypt Vote
The Muslim Brotherhood party secured 39 percent of the vote, while the Salafi Al Nour party won 31 percent of the vote in the second stage of Egypt’s landmark post-Mubarak elections, according to unofficial results published on the website of Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper on Sunday.
The unofficial results for the second stage of elections for the lower house of the Egyptian parliament also showed that the secular, liberal Wafd party won 22 percent of the vote. Islamist parties won some 70 percent of the total vote, a similar result to the first stage of elections, which took place on November 28.
Turnout in the second round of voting in Egypt’s parliamentary elections reached 67 per cent, with most constituencies expecting run-off votes, elections officials said Sunday, with more than 12 million citizens casting their ballots on Wednesday and Thursday.
The turnout was higher than that of the first round, estimated by the High Elections Commission at 60 per cent. A final round, with the remaining nine provinces, has been set for January.
The elections took place in nine provinces, in Islamiyya, Suez and Giza. The gap between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al Nour party shrank in this round of voting, with the Brotherhood winning 49 percent of the vote, and Al Nour won 20 percent in the previous round.
Violence continued on Sunday for the third day straight in Egypt, where the military sought to isolate pro-democracy activists protesting against their rule, depicting them as conspirators and vandals. Troops and protesters pelting each other with stones near parliament in the heart of the capital.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
