Zimbabwe election may go to runoff

According to initial official results released by the Zimbabwe Election Commission, with 66 of 210 parliament seats decided, Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party was one seat ahead of the main opposition party with no presidential results announced. The ruling party had won 31 seats and the opposition 30. Five went to other parties.

An independent monitoring group, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, released a sample from 435 polling stations that showed opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai winning 49.4% of the vote and Mugabe 41.4%. A presidential candidate would win outright by receiving more than 50% of the vote.

If there was a runoff, many believe Mugabe would lose because Tsvangirai would gain a large percentage of votes from the third main candidate, Simba Makoni, a ruling party defector and former finance minister. The runoff would be held within 21 days.

As opposition observers continued to predict a victory over Mugabe and declared that his ruling party was in shock, Britain, Germany, the U.S. and the European Union called on the national election commission to speed up the release of final results.

Although commission results have only trickled out, final counts at individual polling stations were made public for the first time, and some analysts said they would be difficult to tamper with. ZANU-PF lost key rural strongholds, including a seat in Mugabe's home village, according to the initial results.

With tension growing, riot police were reported in townships near Harare where opposition support is strongest.

Mugabe, whose 28-year autocratic tenure has been buffeted by a rapidly escalating economic crisis, met in emergency session with military and security chiefs. In recent weeks, several hard-line security chiefs said they would not serve Tsvangirai, and last week Mugabe said the opposition leader would never be allowed to rule Zimbabwe.

"Without doubt they're in shock," said former ruling party Information Minister Jonathan Moyo. "Right now they're facing the fact that it's either Morgan [Tsvangirai] winning or a runoff, which Mugabe won't win," said Moyo, who ran as an independent.

Moyo dismissed the possibility that the voting results could be fixed.