Final stats show wide margin for U.D.P.

And in an additional note on the election, while the balloting went smoothly, the official results have been a long time coming. The statistics issued last week have been revised several times and it was only this afternoon that the Chief Elections Officer issued the final tally. Those numbers show that nationwide, the United Democratic Party received fifty-six point ninety-eight percent of the popular vote to forty point nine nine percent for the Peoples’ United Party. The so called third parties and independents together earned just two percent of the vote. The most lopsided constituency race was in Queen’s Square where Dean Barrow ran up over seventy-six percent of the votes cast, while the closest contest was in Freetown where the P.U.P.’s Francis Fonseca edged Michael Peyrefitte by just sixteen ballots.

Overall voter turnout was a relatively respectable seventy four and a half percent, down five points from 2003.

As for the referendum on an elected Senate, statistics just released this evening by the Elections and Boundaries Department show that while over one hundred and sixteen thousand voters cast ballots for the candidates, only seventy-three thousand bothered to vote in the referendum—a total of just forty-six point six percent of those registered. Of those voting, over sixty-one percent said yes to the elected Senate while thirty-six percent voted no. Where this leaves the initiative to have Senators elected is anybody’s guess, but in the meantime Prime Minister Barrow has said he will proceed with his party’s plan to expand the Senate to make the opposition and civil society appointees comprise a majority.