Tallies Show Mugabe Vulnerable

Anything less than a decisive majority would require a runoff between the top two finishers, probably on April 19.

Electoral officials warned Sunday that they alone were empowered to release results, then failed to give any. Rumors spread of possible military action to protect Mugabe's power. Trucks of riot police and armored personnel carriers filled with soldiers appeared.

As confusion grew, the clearest development was that Mugabe had lost his capacity to churn out massively one-sided results in rural areas.

The polling station closest to his family home, in Kutama, showed Mugabe with 203 votes and Tsvangirai with 20. A few miles down the road, in the army garrison town of Darwendale -- the same electoral district as Mugabe's home -- his edge was narrower, 264 to 147. Adding in the 45 votes for Makoni, Mugabe's support was 58 percent in an area where he once produced massive landslides.

With each few miles farther from Mugabe's house, more and more posters for Tsvangirai, Makoni and opposition candidates for parliament appeared. In Chinhoyi, they dramatically outnumbered the posters of Mugabe looking stern and waving his right fist in the symbol of his ruling party.

At a primary school near Chinhoyi's modest downtown, voters wandered by to check the results hanging on a window. The split was even wider there than in the town as a whole: 75 votes for Tsvangirai, 15 for Mugabe and 10 for Makoni. The opposition had never before won an election in Chinhoyi, capital of Mugabe's home province, Mashonaland West.

Late in the afternoon, as the sun slipped toward the horizon, a couple of friends glanced up at the sheet before giving a furtive cheer. Despite the results, a heavy police presence and a legacy of political violence left many in Chinhoyi skittish.

"We want change," said Tapiwa Chigango, 26, an auto mechanic. "The situation is different than 2005," when Zimbabweans last voted.

Unlike in urban areas, where frustration is running high as the opposition worries that a victory could be stolen, Chinhoyi's voters showed little enthusiasm for the idea of protesting if Mugabe is declared the winner.

"They will beat people," said Chigango's friend, Tapiwanashe Chigunwe, 21, who is unemployed.

Chigango added, "Those guys with black boots, they will hit you. So to keep my body safe, I will stay inside."

Most people here were reluctant to have their names appear in a newspaper because they fear retaliation.

"Now we are happy," said a 45-year-old woman who has lived in Zimbabwe her entire life but was not allowed to vote because her parents were born in neighboring Malawi. "Maybe this time the thing will change."

Outside another polling station in Chinhoyi, a 38-year-old law student marveled that the results were available for all to see. "In the past it was hidden. You couldn't see what was on the ground," the student said. "Now you know."