Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Morsy leads the presidential race so far among Egyptians in Saudi Arabia, Egyptian Ambassador in Riyadh Mahmoud Ouf said Monday.
Morsy led with 49.5 percent of the 83,351 valid votes cast in the Riyadh constituency, the Egyptian Embassy in Riyadh announced Monday. The constituency includes the central, east and northeast parts of Saudi Arabia, state-run news agency MENA reported.
Presidential hopeful Abdel Moneim Abouel Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood member, won 26.13 percent of the vote. Nasserist hopeful Hamdeen Sabbahi came in third with 11.4 percent.
Former Arab League chief Amr Moussa ranked fourth with 7.45 percent, while ex-Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafiq followed with 4.24 percent. The two Mubarak-era ministers ranked as front-runners in local polls.
Out of an estimated 160,000 voters who registered to vote in Riyadh, 55 percent cast their votes, either by coming to the embassy in person or by sending their choices by mail.
On Sunday, Ali al-Esheiry, the Egyptian consul-general in Jeddah, announced the voting results from Jeddah constituency, which includes west, northwest and south Saudi Arabia. He said 48 percent of about 56,000 votes went to Morsy.
Abouel Fotouh came in second with 28 percent, while Sabbahi came in third with 6,029 votes and Moussa followed with 4,504 votes. The other candidates in the race received less than 2,000 votes.
Morsy previously won 30.9 percent of the vote for Egyptians in Kuwait, followed by Abouel Fotouh with almost a quarter of the votes, the Egyptian ambassador to Kuwait announced Sunday.
Meanwhile, Abouel Fotouh leads the race in the US constituencies of Washington, Houston and Chicago, while Shafiq won the highest number of votes in New York and Los Angeles.
Polling stations set up overseas were scheduled to begin vote counting after voting ended for Egyptians abroad at 8 pm on 17 May, according to rules set by the Presidential Elections Commission.
The results are set to be announced when the vote-counting process ends. Voting in Egypt will open Wednesday and Thursday.
