Zimbabwe's presidential and parliamentary elections were "free, honest and credible", the head of the African Union observer mission says.
Speaking in the capital Harare on Friday, Olusegun Obasanjo said the elections were fair and free "from the campaigning point of view".
The former Nigerian president admitted that there were "incidents that could have been avoided" during Wednesday's poll, but stressed that the African Union observers did not believe they could change the overall outcome, the BBC reports.
His assessment sharply contrasted to that by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network - the largest group of domestic monitors, who said the poll was "seriously compromised", because of voter registration problems that might have disenfranchised up to a million people - a fifth of all Zimbabweans of voting age.
President Robert Mugabe's party is claiming victory in the election, which was rejected as a "huge farce" by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the BBC reports.
Mr Tsvangirai said the vote should be considered invalid because of polling day irregularities and vote-rigging by Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. It was unclear whether Mr Tsvangirai or his party would mount any kind of legal challenge.
On Wednesday, voters were choosing a president, 210 lawmakers and local councillors. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has five days to declare who won the poll.
First official results from national assembly elections show that Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party is taking an early lead. However, the seats announced were mostly in Mr Mugabe's rural strongholds.
Zanu-PF spokesman Rugaro Gumbo predicted that Mr Mugabe, 89, - who is running for a seventh term - would get at least 70% of the vote in the presidential poll.
"We are expecting a landslide victory," he was quoted as saying in Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper.
Zanu-PF and Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change have shared an uneasy coalition government since 2009 under a deal brokered to end the deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.
