The Independent Election Commission announced President Ashraf Ghani as winner of Afghanistan’s presidential election during a press conference on Tuesday.

The final results of the election, according to the IEC, show that President Ashraf Ghani has the highest count with 50.6% of the total, at 923,592 votes.

The final results of the election show that Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has 39.52% of the total, with 720,841 votes, according to the IEC.

IEC chairperson Hawa Alam Nuristani announced Mohammad Ashraf Ghani as the “elected president of Afghanistan” with 50.6%.

The total turnout was 1,823,948 votes from 24,258 polling stations--98% of all the polling stations that were opened on the September 28 polling day--according to Nuristani. 

She called the day “historic” and said that 31.5 percent of the participants were women. 

Nuristani said that 26,580 polling stations were open on election day while 3,006 polling stations were closed. 

Of the total 29,586 polling stations, 11,000 of them were for women and 18,476 of them were for men. 

She added that all of the decisions of the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) concerning the audit and partial recount of the 300,000 disputed votes were implemented by the IEC.

In total, there were 5,373 polling centers, Nuristani said, adding that the use of biometric devices and the commission’s implementation of reforms were “firsts” for Afghanistan. 

There was a slight change in Tuesday’s announcement from IEC’s announcement of the preliminary elections on December 22, 2019. Based on the IECC’s decision, a partial audit and partial recount were conducted of the 300,000 disputed votes, and 262 votes were added to Ghani's total, 742 votes were added to Abdullah's, and 453 votes were invalidated, according to the IEC.

Based on the preliminary results that were announced late last December, incumbent President Ashraf Ghani was narrowly declared the winner while Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah got 39% of a total of over 1.8 million votes.