When a flood of results was announced from dawn yesterday, it was the nature as well as the size of President Robert Mugabe's victory that surprised many Zimbabweans.
Not only did the aging autocrat hold his vote in Harare; he also dramatically boosted his tally in those rural areas thought to be strongholds of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Election monitors who have scrutinised the results say they are evidence of how Mr Mugabe combined violence with manipulation to swing the poll his way.
The jarring turnaround was most obvious in Matabeleland. Mr Mugabe has been intensely unpopular in this western province since the 1980s, when government troops massacred an estimated 20,000 civilians. Recent food shortages and famine are thought to have further damaged Mr Mugabe's chances of a strong showing.
But yesterday's results told a dramatically different story. During the June 2000 elections the ruling Zanu-PF polled just over 105,000 votes in Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and Bulawayo city.
This year President Mugabe attracted 165,000 votes, a spectacular rise of over 54 per cent.
The swing was particularly striking in certain constituencies. Take, for example, Bubi Umguza, a farming and mining area on the road between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls. Two years ago the opposition romped home with twice as many votes as Zanu-PF. But this year, while the MDC vote slipped slightly, the President almost tripled his tally.
One explanation for the dramatic change could be the dramatic increase in polling stations. While voters in Harare were queuing for up to 48 hours, the people of Bubi Umguza had 64 polling stations, 30 more than the last time.
There were also twice as many "mobile" stations - poll boxes transported to rural locations. Monitors warned that these were replete with fraud possibilities.
One opposition poll monitor who contacted The Irish Times said he had counted 137 votes going into one ballot box. He was prevented from following the box to the counting station, however, after militia halted him at a roadblock. But later, at the constituency count, he saw that the same box when it was opened was full to the brim with ballot papers.
Similar voting patterns were found in several rural areas, according to the Zimbabwe Election Monitoring Group.
"The MDC has lost in so many places where they have a sitting MP," the group chairman, Mr Reginald Matchaba Hove, said. "Either it doesn't make sense or it's totally fraudulent."