Marcos, Robredo now in tense neck-and-neck race

Vice presidential candidates Bongbong Marcos and Leni Robredo. SCREENGRAB FROM THE CNN LIVESTREAM

The vice presidential contest has turned into a nail-biter, and voters are staying up late to monitor the latest updates. At 2:30 am, this website’s traffic is almost twice as high as the usual workday traffic, drawn in part by the increasingly tight race between the two leading vice presidential candidates.

Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has led the unofficial tally of the Commission on Elections Transparency Server since counting began shortly after 5 pm yesterday, when most of the polling centers closed, but his lead has narrowed in the last few hours. From a million-vote difference, equivalent to a little over 4 percent of the voter base, Marcos’ lead steadily lost ground to Robredo. From a comfortable  e4 percent, the difference between the candidates’ vote totals fell to 3 percent in the 9:39 pm update, and then fell some more.

With 78 percent of the total number of clustered precincts reporting, the lead had dropped to 1.3 percent; with 84.16 percent reporting, Marcos’ lead had shrunk to 148,000 votes, or 0.42-percent. With 86 percent reporting, the margin between the two politicians fell to 0.17 percent.

As of this writing, the latest update, time-stamped 2:39 am, shows the difference between Marcos and Robredo is now down to 21,000, or 0.06 percent.

Marcos currently has 12,798,960 votes, just ahead of Robredo’s 12,777,952 votes.

The Comelec mirror server, housed at the Pope Pius XII Catholic Center in Manila, has as of 2:39 am counted 39,945,108  votes — 71.6 7 percent of the total number of registered voters of 55,735,757. – JN