Cape Town - With just hours to go before the Western Cape’s election results are released, all eyes will be on the IEC’s election results centre at Century City.
IEC provincial chairperson, Courtney Sampson announced on Thursday that the province’s election results would be released on Friday.
Sampson said by Thursday all voting and counting was completed in the province.
According to him, 78% of the votes in the province had been counted, captured and audited.
At the last press conference on Thursday, Sampson said 18 municipalities’ votes had been counted, captured and audited.
Only seven municipalities needed to be completed.
These included Stellenbosch, Breede Valley, George, Bitou, Knysna, City of Cape Town and Drakenstein.
“The results in those seven municipalities are in the process of being counted, captured and audited,” said Sampson.
He said in most cases, auditors were dealing with one single issue and emphasised that everything would be finalised by Thursday night.
The DA is leading the race in the Western Cape followed by the ANC and EFF.
While he said election staff were very tired and "half asleep” they were taking every precaution so that mistakes do not creep in.
Sampson added that they key challenge this week was that voters were under the impression they could vote anywhere.
He also moved to dispel rumours that the IEC in the province had run out of ballot papers.
He stressed that delay in ballot papers reaching the various voting stations was because the vehicles transporting the ballot papers needed to be escorted by police.
The national results are expected to be announced at 4pm on Saturday afternoon from the IEC’s national headquarters in Pretoria.