Latest results released yesterday evening  by the Sierra Leone National Electoral Commission (NEC) still put the APC flag bearer Ernest Koroma in the lead with 662, 117 on day 6 of vote counting.  The SLPP leader Berewa closes in trailing with 568, 491 while Margai of the PMDC is third with 211, 849 votes. Turay of CPP is fourth with a distant 23, 247 while Jalloh of NDA is fifth with 14, 460.

 With little over 1000 more remaining polling stations yet to have their votes tallied, a run-off is looking more likely;  none of the candidates stands a chance of getting a little over  a million votes (55 %) needed to avoid a second round. Election observers have generally expressed concern over the delay in the vote counting. However, NEC has in a press release on Saturday August 18 indicated that it ‘has been making every attempt to find ways to accelerate the process and at the same time maintain the integrity of the process.' The press release continues below showing progress that has been made so far:

• 5015 polling station results have now been entered into the results database. This represents 81.3% of all polling stations.
• Total number of votes inputted into the system is 1,612,128. (1,495,062 for candidates and 117,066 invalid).  Total invalid votes constitute 7.3% of all votes cast.
• The average national turnout is currently 75.6%.
• There are no new results for the parliamentary elections. Once again, we highlight that while the number of constituency results is still low, this is due to the fact that no progressive results are given for the constituencies – these are only announced when all the stations for a particular constituency have been entered. I want to emphasise again that results for all constituencies are being entered and considerable progress is being made.
• As before, the results which will be announced today are a cumulative total of the results from yesterday and the results processed since the announcement yesterday.
• I also want to remind you that the detailed results, by polling station and by center, are posted on the NEC web site.
• The next press briefing will be held here on Monday, 20 August. There will be no press briefing tomorrow Sunday. I want to make it clear, however, that this does not mean that tallying will not continue and that the Commission is taking a day-off. However, at this stage, the Commission will concentrate on dealing with those cases that require investigation, so progress tomorrow will be slow and there will be little information to provide. On Monday we expect to have made good progress, and are expecting to be able to announce a number of constituency results