 In Mazowe West and Shamva South, the voting pattern could be linked to the history of brutal and wide‐spread violence in 2008, suggesting that fear and coercion could have been particular factors in these constituencies. ZESN and the media have also reported coerced assisted votes in these constituencies.107 The absence of an electronic copy of the voters’ roll that can be analysed, and compared to the roll used in 2008, makes it difficult to assess exactly what happened in this election. However, it seems a reasonable assertion that the mass movement of non‐urban voters into traditionally middle class urban suburbs swayed the vote in favour of ZANU PF in several Harare constituencies. This mass movement was combined with 15% of voters being turned away in Harare constituencies, many of whom reported having voted in that constituency in the past. In other words, a sizeable number of the regular voters of Harare were effectively disenfranchised and replaced with voters from outside the city. C. CONCLUSION Election results since 2000 show some recognizable, if depressing, trends. The MDC‐T vote has remained remarkably consistent over the last decade in terms of numbers, while the ZANU PF vote has generally, with the exception of 2008, been several hundred thousand votes more than the opposition vote. The leap in one million votes for ZANU PF is hard to explain between 2008 and 2013 ‐ but is more believable when seen as (only) 27% higher than their 2002 vote. However, as all elections have been mired in controversy since 2000, analyzing the figures may reveal more about how ZANU PF manipulates its apparent support than anything else. In this election, there were widespread, convincing reports of coerced assisted voting, which the gross provincial figures shed little light on. The assisted voting figures in all provinces remain well below the illiteracy rates, and there are no figures from previous elections with which to compare this year’s assisted vote. The fact that 15% of voters were turned away in Harare, and only 4.9% in ZANU PF rural strongholds, combined with the busing in to Harare of apparently rural voters in large numbers, is indicative of a strategy of targeting certain Harare constituencies with the aim of claiming them for ZANU PF. However, it remains to be seen if the MDC‐T election petitions will be able to prove this in any convincing way. The large increases in votes cast in the 51 most‐affected constituencies certainly played a key role in ZANU PF’s election landslide. While some of these seats were won by MDC‐T, more than 80% were won by ZANU PF. Whether the massive increases in votes were in fact owing to irregularities as MDC‐T claims, or whether as ZANU PF claims, to their efforts to                                                              107 ZESN 2013 Election report, page 85 refers to coerced voting reported by their observers in Shamva South and Mazowe West. This is reported in 17 constituencies in the ZESN report.   44