With his party (the All Peoples Congress) winning a clear parliamentary majority controlling 59 of the 112 seats, beating the ruling SLPP party that won 43, followed by the PMDC that bagged the remaining 10, coupled with his huge lead in the first round of the presidential poll, the main challenger and clear front-runner, Ernest Bai Koroma, apparently intensified his offensive for the presidency by succeeding to win the support of Charles Margai and his PMDC party.

Final results released by National Electoral Commission Chair Dr Christiana Thorpe Saturday August 25 put Ernest Koroma far ahead in the presidential poll with 815, 523 beating his closest rival Solomon Berewa of the ruling SLPP, who polled 704,) 012, by 114,012 votes. Charles Margai of the PMDC also put up a good challenge by coming third with 255,499 while Turay of the Convention Peoples Party (CPP)  came fourth with 28, 610. NDA's Jalloh polled 17,748 while the Peoples Liberation Party (PLP) got 10, 556 and United National Peoples Party (UNPP) got 7,260. The APC front runner has also succeeded in winning the support of Alhaji Amadu Jalloh  of the National Democractic Alliance (NDA) who could now be seen in the company of Margai and Koroma in the campaign trail in the regions. It is not yet clear who the other smaller parties are going to follow in the run-off.

 Announcing the September 8 as the date set aside for the Presidential Run-off, the NEC Chair said this final round is bound to go on well if voters demonstrate the same level of discipline with which they conducted themselves in the first round. She has so far been widely praised for the peaceful and fair manner in which the voting was conducted in the first round, as well as the vote counting and collating of the final results that immediately followed.  However, some political parties have been trading accusations with NEC for the poor voter education, which, they said, accounted for the almost 8 per cent void votes of 144, 898 thus leaving the valid votes at 1, 839,208 out of the 1,984,106 votes officially reported.