Election count shows Turkey's Erdogan under threshold needed to avoid presidential election runoff

[dalton99a]

https://apnews.com/article/turkey-elections-erdogan-presidency-parliament-6291df76874c24550008c80b5c168992

Election count shows Turkey’s Erdogan under threshold needed to avoid presidential election runoff
By SUZAN FRASER and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Voter support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dipped below the majority required to win reelection outright with the ballot count from Turkey’s national election nearly completed Sunday, making it more likely Turkey is headed toward a May 28 presidential runoff.

With almost 91% of ballot boxes counted, Erdogan had 49.9% of the vote, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency. His main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, had 44.4% as the gap between the two shrank.

Meanwhile, the opposition-leaning Anka news agency reported that with 95% of ballot boxes counted, Erdogan had 49% and Kilicdaroglu 45%.

If neither candidate secures more than 50%, the two will compete in a run-off vote in two weeks. Turkey’s election authority, the Supreme Electoral Board, said it was providing numbers to competing political parties “instantly” but would not make the results public until the count was completed and finalized.

Further complicating the picture, the opposition candidate’s party accused Anadolu of manipulating results, insisting that Kilicdaroglu was narrowly leading with 47.42% to Erdogan’s 46.80%.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Biden cracked a joke today about the Turkish election,

Link to tweet

[thucythucy]

2. I tried running to Turkey

but I slipped on Greece.

--Joke first heard when I was in grade school.