Voters in the final constituency to vote in Ghana's presidential run-off delivered a further blow yesterday to the ruling party, already trailing narrowly in the election, and which has boycotted the ballot.
Opposition leader John Atta Mills and the ruling party's Nana Akufo-Addo are vying to succeed outgoing president John Kufuor as the west African country prepares to start producing crude oil in 2010. Both candidates are foreign-trained lawyers.
As expected, early results from a handful of polling stations in the rural Tain constituency, which was voting late after problems in last Sunday's run-off, showed turnout was low and heavily weighted in Mr Mills's favour.
One of the biggest polling stations at a health centre in the district capital of Nsawkaw recorded 355 votes for Mr Mills and 68 for Mr Akufo-Addo out of a total registered electorate of 1,160. Full results are expected over the weekend.
Last Sunday's run-off was so close that Tain's 53,000 voters were left to decide the outcome, raising tensions over a vote seen as a chance to bolster Africa's battered democratic credentials after flawed and bloody polls in Zimbabwe and Kenya.
Before yesterday's vote, Mr Mills, of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), led with 50.13 per cent of votes, ahead of Mr Akufo-Addo, of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), on 49.87 per cent. Barely 23,000 votes separated the two candidates. "I want to vote so that we can end this tussle," pensioner Kwadwo Adjei said as he waited to vote.
Even before the NPP boycott, Mr Mills was favourite to win the ballot and to take the presidency after his NDC overturned the ruling NPP's majority in parliament in a simultaneous legislative election on December 7th.
Mr Mills led in Tain then, so Mr Akufo-Addo would require a huge swing in voters' loyalties there to win the national vote.
"All the signs are that Tain will be taken by the NDC," said Rolake Akinola, analyst at consultancy Control Risks in London. But Mr Akufo-Addo has refused to concede defeat and the NPP has appealed results from other regions, citing irregularities.
Election observers from west African regional bloc Ecowas said turnout at some polling stations was as low as 20 per cent.
Earlier, youths in NPP T-shirts crammed into state-owned Metro Mass Transport buses and cruised round Nsawkaw shouting "No Vote" at people queuing at polling stations.