As Egypt wraps up the first round of its immensely controversial referendum on the draft constitution, the country has grown perhaps even more divided with the release of the polling results than it was before.
Quite surprisingly, even for many of the anti-constitution campaigners, the draft constitution won only 56.5% support, while the “no” camp scored a somewhat unexpected 43.5%. Islamists were regularly claiming an expected 70%+ figure, though maybe largely as propaganda, while many analysts were expecting something within the mid-sixties range. While there is an avalanche of reports alleging various forms of electoral violation and voter manipulation coupled with calls for at least a repeat of the first round, for the purposes of this piece I will assume the results were sufficiently fair and accurate.
