Early indications suggest that thr results of yesterday's Tunisian Presidential election will see Beji Caid Essebsi of Nidaa Tounes and Moncef Marzouki will face each other in a runoff next month.
There were 27 candidates on the ballot (though five of these had withdrawn after the ballots were printed). Essebsi's Nidaa Tounes Party won the largest number of seats in last month's Parliamentary elections; Marzouki is the outgoing incumbent President of the transitional period.
Ennahda, the Islamist Party that won the first round of elections after the revolution and ran second last month, did not field a Presidential candidate. Marzouki is likely to try to win Ennahda votes in the runoff; he is likely to pursue the argument he used in his campaign, that one party should not dominate both the Prime Ministry and Parliament. He has also sought to portray the 87-year-old Essebsi as a symbol of the return of the ancien regime.
Leftist candidate Hamma Hammami ran third.
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