Pretoria - The race for top spot in Gauteng province between South Africa's top three political parties remained tight on Thursday night.
Just before 9pm, the African National Congress (ANC) hit the million votes mark - or 51 percent of the vote, followed by the Democratic Alliance with 531 016 votes.
The Economic Freedom Fighters had received 280 535 votes from Gauteng residents after just over half of the votes cast were counted. If the trend continues, the Freedom Front Plus, with a surprising 69 374 votes, could become the fourth biggest party in the province with. With 3.68 percent of the vote in Gauteng, the FF Plus was outperforming the Inkatha Freedom Party at 90,73, the African Christian Democratic Party (0.7 percent) and the PAC at 0.26 percent.
Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) earlier announced that the capturing of votes was almost complete in the Northern Cape. At least 94.48 percent of results were captured followed by the Western Cape at 89.8 percent, the Eastern Cape at 85.1 percent, Mpumalanga at 80 percent and North West at 75 percent.
"Provinces with the most results still awaiting capture were KwaZulu-Natal (44.84 percent outstanding), Limpopo (43.18 percent outstanding), Free State (33.62 percent outstanding) and Gauteng (30.86 percent outstanding,'' the IEC said.
Of the around 10 million votes captured by 6:30pm, 329 936 were special votes and 120,172 were spoilt ballots. The results captured to date show that voter turnout is at 65.36 percent nationally with the highest turnout in Gauteng at 71 percent and the lowest at 58 percent in Limpopo.