President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita

According to preliminary results, Mali’s presidential election will go to a run-off vote after President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita failed to get enough votes to outrightly win a second term in office.

The country’s Ministry of Territorial Administration said Keita won 41.4 percent of the votes in the mostly desert West African country while his main rival, Soumaila Cisse won 17.8 percent.

The President of Mali is elected by absolute majority vote using the two-round system. A candidate needs to secure 50 percent-plus-one of the votes cast to secure an outright victory.

Short of that, a second round of elections has been slated to hold on August 12, 2018 between the top two candidates – Keita, who took office in 2013 and opposition frontrunner, Cisse.

In 2013, Keita defeated Cisse in the presidential polls with a landslide victory (77%) in the second round of the vote.

However, the opposition bloc had alleged fraud on the part of government even though Keita’s spokesman had long projected that the vote would eventually be decided through a run-off.