Early poll results put Mauritania ruling party candidate Mohamed Ould Ghazouani comfortably ahead in Saturday's election, taking 50.72 percent of the vote with just over half votes counted, data from the electoral commission showed on Sunday.
His nearest rival, Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who is backed by Mauritania's biggest Islamist party, has 18.47 percent of the vote so far, the figures showed.
The election was the first in the Saharan nation's history since independence from France in 1960 to choose a successor to a democratically-elected president.
Short link: