The Central Election Commission's deputy chairman Mukhtar Erman put the closing numbers on record at 20:34 in Astana: 9,352,151 voters of the 12,605,788 on the lists had taken part, or 74.19%. Official results are due by 30 August. No party breakdown was published on the night.
Exit polls filled the gap, and they agree. Socis-A, polling at 200 stations with a margin of 1.5 points, gave Adilet 70.7%, Auyl 6.4%, Respublica 5.5%, Ak Zhol 5.4% and the OSDP 5.0%, with the People's Party at 3.2% and Baytaq at 1.2% below the 5% entry bar. The Institute of Eurasian Integration put Adilet at 71.8%, the Institute of Public Policy at 72.3%, and both drew the line under the same 5 parties. Seven parties were admitted to the ballot; Amanat, merged into Adilet in June, was never on it.
The map of enthusiasm inverts the map of money
Seat distribution waits for the official count: the quota arithmetic that assigns the 145 mandates runs on totals the commission has yet to publish. The shape, though, was measured long before Sunday. July surveys had the leading party between 65.1% and 70.3%, and the vote landed where the surveys pointed.
Turnout is the more revealing map. Turkestan region voted at 92.16%, Zhetysu at 91.19%, Kyzylorda at 90.75%. Almaty city voted at 43.23% and Astana at 51.67%. The map of enthusiasm inverts the map of money: participation ran highest across the agrarian regions and lowest in the 2 biggest cities. Whatever the official count says, the chamber will owe its mandate to the regions while it governs cities that mostly stayed home.
Abroad, 79 stations operated in 61 countries, and 6,007 of the 11,402 registered voters used them, deputy foreign minister Arman Issetov said on Sunday evening. On Tuesday the ministry's count was 70, after it reported losing sites in Ukraine, Iran and Ethiopia; the voting-day figure runs 9 higher, without an itemised explanation.
Tokayev spent his own election-day briefing on what comes next. "The government must resign," he told reporters after voting at station 520 in Astana, promising changes to its composition while rating its work as diligent. The vice-presidency, an office Kazakhstan has never had, will be filled by "a person you all know well", with the name to come "within the next week or ten days".
The observation file stays open. An Organization of Turkic States mission monitored the vote, the OSCE's observers worked under Vincent Piket, and CIS observers reported no violations during the day; the missions' concluding statements had not been published when this edition closed. What changes next carries a calendar: the count by 30 August, the resignation Tokayev has already announced, and a name.