Uganda polls: Museveni takes early lead with 3.9 million votes

Uganda’s electoral landscape is taking shape as President Yoweri Museveni establishes an early commanding lead in the 2026 presidential elections.

The Uganda Electoral Commission (EC) released the second preliminary results on Friday, revealing that Museveni has so far garnered 3,960,438 votes, representing 76.25 percent of the total valid votes counted.

The results, announced by Justice Simon Byabakama, Chairperson of the EC, are based on tallies from 22,758 polling stations, covering 5,194,338 valid votes.

The update also highlighted votes secured by other candidates, including opposition leader Bobi Wine, who has received 1,312,047 votes, or 19.85 percent, while other candidates remain in single-digit shares.

Other candidates remain in single-digit shares.

They include Frank Bulira has 23,267 votes (0.45%), Robert Kasibante 15,929 votes (0.31%), Joseph Mabirizi 10,910 votes (0.21%), Mugisha Muntu 29,504 votes (0.57%), Mubarak Munyagwa 14,742 votes (0.28%), and Nandala Mafabi 108,301 votes (2.08%).

The EC also reported 129,441 invalid votes and 17,281 spoilt ballots, bringing the total votes counted so far to 5,323,779.

Justice Byabakama indicated that the next update would be provided at 2:00 PM on January 16, 2026, as counting continues across various regions of the country.

Museveni’s early lead mirrors past election patterns in which the long-serving president has performed strongly.

The election is a high-stakes rematch between 43-year-old opposition leader Bobi Wine (Kyagulanyi Ssentamu) and 81-year-old incumbent President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power for four decades.

Uganda’s election process came under sharp focus on Thursday after President Yoweri Museveni himself was affected by biometric verification failures that disrupted voting across the country.

At his polling station, electronic voter identification machines failed to recognise Museveni’s fingerprints, briefly preventing him from casting his ballot and mirroring challenges reported by many voters nationwide.

“I put my right fingerprints on the machines, but it didn’t work. The machine did not accept it. I put my left fingerprints, but it did not accept it,” Museveni told journalists after the incident.

“It could be they took them in a different angle. But my face was scanned and accepted by the machine,” he said.