🇿🇲 ANALYSIS | Early Returns Put Vote Battle For Margins into Focus
The first polling-station returns emerging from Zambia’s 2026 election are beginning to reveal the geography of the presidential contest. They are still far too limited to call the election, and most figures circulating outside the Electoral Commission of Zambia’s national tally remain provisional.
But one pattern deserves attention: Hakainde Hichilema is posting overwhelming numbers in his traditional western and north-western belt while showing meaningful competitiveness in parts of the Northern circuit. Brian Mundubile, meanwhile, is establishing substantial leads in parts of Kasama and Chipata. At this stage, the election is becoming a contest not simply over who wins particular regions, but by how much.
The most consequential early numbers may be coming from Northern Province. Mundubile is performing strongly in Kasama Central. Returns shared with The People’s Brief show him leading 299–99 at Buseko Hall Stream 1, 239–120 at NCU Offices Stream 1, 339–66 at Kapongolo Primary, and 280–106 and 245–130 in two Kasenda Primary streams. Those are significant margins. But Northern Province is not producing a uniform picture. At Mukupa Kaoma in Lunte, Hichilema leads 354–185. More strikingly, the Kaputa figures supplied to us show Hichilema ahead 214–85 at Ilembwe, 345–160 at Chingoyo and 295–104 at Shikayamba. If that level of UPND penetration persists across rural Northern Province, it would matter considerably to the national arithmetic.
Eastern Province presents a different picture. Three reported streams at Chipata Trades Institute in Chipata Central give Mundubile 268–182, 274–136 and 273–116. Combined, that is 815 votes for Mundubile against 434 for Hichilema, almost a two-to-one advantage. It is only one urban polling location, but it indicates Mundubile may be building the kind of Eastern Province margin he needs. The unresolved question is whether similar margins are appearing across rural Eastern Province. Winning Eastern is one thing. Building a sufficiently large surplus there is another.
Hichilema’s traditional strongholds are showing considerably less ambiguity. At Mbeta Island in Sioma, Western Province, a result supplied to The People’s Brief gives Hichilema 474 votes against nine for Mundubile. The photographed forms from Kalabo and Shangombo similarly show extremely lopsided UPND victories. Most striking is the reported Mwinilunga West constituency figure of approximately 27,000 for Hichilema against 205 for Mundubile. That constituency-level figure requires formal ECZ confirmation, but if validated, it illustrates the scale of the margins Mundubile must compensate for elsewhere.
This is where the electoral mathematics becomes important. A 70–30 victory and a 98–2 victory are both constituency victories, but they are not remotely equivalent in a national presidential election. Hichilema does not necessarily need to win Kasama or Chipata if he can substantially reduce his losses there while continuing to accumulate enormous vote surpluses across Southern, Western and North-Western provinces. Conversely, Mundubile needs more than victories across Northern, Muchinga, Luapula and Eastern. He needs large enough margins from those regions, plus competitive performances in Central, Copperbelt and Lusaka, to offset the UPND’s southern and western vote bank.
Turnout could complicate the equation further. Observations supplied from across the country suggest particularly heavy participation in several rural areas of Southern, Western, North-Western and Central provinces, while parts of Lusaka and the Copperbelt appeared more subdued during portions of polling day. We cannot yet translate those observations into turnout percentages. But if certified figures eventually confirm materially higher participation in regions where one candidate enjoys overwhelming support, turnout itself becomes part of the margin calculation.
There is also an early warning against reading Zambia through a simple regional binary. Kaputa and Lunte matter precisely because they test whether Hichilema can take a meaningful minority or in some places a majority inside territory where Mundubile would expect strength. Chipata matters for the opposite reason: it tests whether Mundubile can consolidate Eastern Province at sufficiently high levels. The candidate who protects his strongholds while losing less badly in hostile territory acquires the more efficient national coalition.
So the early picture is not yet Hichilema has won, nor is it Mundubile has lost. There are too few verified returns from Lusaka, Copperbelt, Central, Luapula, Muchinga and large sections of Eastern and Northern provinces to responsibly reach such a conclusion. But the first returns identify the metric to watch overnight: Mundubile’s margins in the Northern-East belt versus Hichilema’s margins across the Southern-Western-North-Western belt with Central, Lusaka and Copperbelt potentially deciding which bloc has enough numerical weight.
The polling-station photographs also reinforce another point. Zambia may have 14 presidential candidates on the ballot, but the returns supplied so far are overwhelmingly concentrating around Hichilema and Mundubile. The two-horse character anticipated during the campaign appears, at least from this small early sample, to be materialising at the ballot box.
For now, these are early, partial and geographically uneven returns. Some come from photographed GEN 20 forms, while others are figures reported from the field and have not yet entered the ECZ national aggregation. The People’s Brief will therefore not project a winner is the shop for u 😂 tinakamba from them. But the first contours are visible. Mundubile is showing strength where he must.
Hichilema is running up enormous margins where expected and, potentially more importantly, showing signs of competing beyond those strongholds. The next batch of results will tell us whether those are isolated stations or the beginning of a national pattern.
© The People’s Brief | Ollus R. Ndomu