Independent candidate Feisal Badar was, on Wednesday morning, on his way to victory in the hotly contested Msambweni by-election beating ODM’s Omar Boga.
According to the tally at the IEBC centre, at 3.30am, Feisal was leading with 14,931 votes against Boga’s 10,257 votes from 126 of the 129 polling stations.
Wiper’s Abdurahman Sheikh was a distant third with 785 votes with the rest of the candidates getting a total of 810.
The by-election which arose following the death of Suleiman Dori was seen as a battle between DP William Ruto and ODM leader Raila Odinga.
Ruto threw his weight behind Feisal after the ruling Jubilee Party announced that it would not field a candidate.
Ruto and Raila deployed political heavyweights to watch over the voting process as they heightened the battle for the Coast voting block.
Despite a low voter turnout, the exercise was marked by arrests of politicians and agents, voter bribery allegations, missing names in the voter register and pockets of violence as rival groups clashed.
Ruto supported Bader as part of a strategy to test his political clout at the Coast.
There has been speculation that President Uhuru Kenyatta was supporting the ODM candidate. The two were photographed together just last week during the President’s commissioning of Likoni floating bridge.
Mombasa Governor Ali Hassan Joho and other ODM troops including secretary-general Edwin Sifuna have for weeks pitched tent in the region to recapture the seat held by ODM since 2007.