Anura, Sajith and Ranil’s first count totals released as second count begins

The final cumulative result of the all-island vote count of the top three candidates, prior to the second count as previously announced by the Election Commission, has been announced.

Accordingly, based on the first count of the cumulative result of the 2024 Presidential Election, NPP’s Anura Kumara Dissanayake leads with 5,634,915 votes (42.31%).

SJB’s Sajith Premadasa is second with 4,363,035 votes, which is 32.76% of the total votes. 

Meanwhile, incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe has polled a total of 2,299,767 votes (17.27%) but fails to qualify for the second count.   

Earlier today, the Chairman of the Election Commission, R.M.A.L. Ratnayake officially announced the counting of second preference of the two leading candidates of the 2024 presidential election, in view of the prevailing situation of the vote results.

Mr. Ratnayake stated that accordingly, all the other candidates except for the National People’s Power (NPP) candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Samagi Jana Sandhanaya candidate Sajith Premadasa will be disqualified from the race.

The Election Commission Chairman announced this during a special media briefing on Sunday (22).

Furthermore, he expressed that since no candidate has obtained the required percentage of votes at the first count, the preference for the two leading candidates Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Sajith Premadasa among the other ballot papers will be counted for a final decision.

Under Sri Lanka’s electoral rules, voters can rank second and third-choice candidates. If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent, those second-preference votes are added to the tally of the two leading candidates to determine a winner.

This will be the first presidential run-off in Sri Lanka’s election history.