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In tight VP race, Cebu could be the difference


Cebu province could hold the key to the vice presidential race, having by far the most number of uncounted votes, according to an analysis of the GMA tally of election returns as of Friday afternoon. Sen. Mar Roxas, whose family roots are in Capiz, has predicted that the final count in the Visayas, his home region, will enable him to overtake current leader Makati Mayor Jojo Binay, who leads his rival by just 804,000 votes with 90 percent of votes counted.
In vote-rich Cebu, Roxas has gotten three out of five counted votes, while one out of five has gone to Binay, with most of the rest going to third-placer Loren Legarda, giving an inkling of how the rest of the province could go. In the central Visayan province, 393,114 uncounted registered votes are spread out over 510 uncounted precincts, but not nearly all of those votes were cast as the rest of Cebu experienced a 71 percent voter turnout. Of 1,440,454 votes in Cebu already counted, 62.33 percent or 897,770 votes went to Roxas, while 23.84 percent or 343,366 were captured by Binay. Regions 6, 7, and 8 – the Visayas regions – account for 1,309,521 registered voters in 2,238 uncounted precincts. According to the Commission on Elections, voter turnout nationwide is around 75 percent, so Roxas cannot count on the perfect attendance of that many voters. Voter turnout is the number of actual voters divided by number of registered voters.
Based on counted precincts, Binay is not being a pushover in his rival’s turf, even leading in Eastern Visayas (Region 8) by over 50,000 votes. Roxas leads Binay in Region 6 (which includes Capiz) by over a million votes and in Region 7 by over 700,000. (For regional breakdown, click here) Uncounted precincts in Cebu have almost 250,000 more registered voters than those in uncounted precincts in Negros Oriental, the next highest province, with 151,262 uncounted registered voters. Lapu-Lapu City in Cebu alone has 85,701 registered voters in 96 uncounted precincts. Nationwide, there are 4,586,030 uncounted registered voters, including nearly 200,000 in Metro Manila. If at least three million of this total actually voted, Roxas needed to have captured about two out of three to become the nation's next Vice President. -- Howie Severino and Jun Verzola, GMANews.TV

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