Algeria’s incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has been re-elected with almost 95 per cent of the vote, the country’s electoral authority ANIE said Sunday.

“Out of 5,630,000 voters recorded, 5,320,000 voted for the independent candidate Abdelmadjid Tebboune, accounting for 94.65 percent of the vote,” ANIE head Mohamed Charfi told reporters in the capital Algiers.

Tebboune, 78, was heavily favoured to secure a second term in the race against moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani, 57, and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche, 41.

“The election was marked by broad transparency” and “reflected the electoral maturity of the people”, said Charfi.

But he did not provide the official turnout rate, which was seen as Tebboune’s major challenge in a vote where his victory was all but certain.

The re-elected president had hoped for a higher turnout than in 2019, the year he was elected amid widely boycotted elections and the Hirak mass pro-democracy protests.

Tebboune was elected at the time amid a record abstention rate of over 60 percent.

In the early hours of the day, ANIE had announced an “average turnout” rate of 48 percent, calling it “provisional”, but it did not give a breakdown of the number of voters against those initially registered.

The announcement came three hours behind schedule after the authority said on Saturday evening that it was extending voting by one hour, expecting more voters to show up.

ANIE had also announced an “average” participation of 26 percent by 5:00 pm (1600 GMT) — which would have compared to 33 percent by that time of day in the 2019 elections.

Hassani’s campaign on Sunday said in a statement that ANIE’s provisional turnout was “strange” and denounced attempts to “inflate the results”.

Hassani heads the moderate Islamist party the Movement of Society for Peace and Aouchiche the centre-left Socialist Forces Front.