Close to 99 percent of south Sudanese voters chose secession from the north in a referendum, according to preliminary results published Friday with tallies from two outstanding states. With 3,197,038 ballots counted, 98.6% had voted to break away in the January 9-15 referendum and become the world's newest nation, partial results posted on the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission website showed.
Partial results from the last two states that had not yet published any figures confirmed the trend revealed to AFP by polling officials on Wednesday. In the state of Jonglei, a whopping 99.93% of votes were in favour of secession, the figures showed. Only 77 voters supported Sudan's unity, while 105 people cast blank or invalid ballots. The first results from the state of Western Equatoria also revealed that, based on the votes counted so far, 99.5% chose secession.