Fielded by the ruling coalition “Benno Bokk Yaakaar” (BBY) Sall faces four challengers namely El Hadj Issa Sall of the Unity and Rally Party, PUR), Idrissa Seck of Rewmi Party, Madické Niang of the Madické 2019 coalition and Ousmane Sonko.
The five candidates will compete for the votes of 6,373,451 voters inside Senegal and 306,592 of their compatriots living abroad.
To this end, voters in the country have at their disposal 14,651 polling stations against 746 open for the Senegalese diaspora.
A total of 40,100,000 ballots representing 8,020,000 per candidate have been printed and will be made available to each voter who will be provided with five ballots bearing the portrait of each candidate before entering the polling booth to cast their vote.
This will then be confirmed by the dipping of the voter’s index finger into an indelible ink.
In Senegal, where there are far more polling stations, the battle will rage for the souls of three regions namely Dakar, Diourbel and Thiès.
For good reason, the three regions out of Senegal’s 14 have a 47.54 percent concentration of the electorate nationally.
In Dakar, the capital, there are 1,687,826 voters (25.25 percent of the national electorate) against 901,216 voters in Thiès (13.48 percent) and 598,015 voters in Diourbel (8.81 percent).
In each of the polling stations and locations (6919) where voters will go to exercise their franchise, there will be a controller of the National Autonomous Electoral Commission (CENA), three representatives of the national administration, and one representative of each of the five candidates.
This will be supervised by 5002 foreign and domestic election observers from 41 observation missions accredited by the Interior Ministry.
All these fell into place after three weeks of electoral campaigning from 3 to February 22 during which the five candidates crisscrossed the country, in an electric atmosphere that often turned violent.
At least 22 people have died in campaign-related incidents including clashes by rival party militants and accidents.