The first "safe" estimate of Sunday's election result is not expected to emerge before 11:00 p.m. on Sunday night, according to the IT firm Singular Logic, which has been assigned the job of collecting and transmitting the results of voting throughout the country.

During a meeting with accredited reporters and party representatives at the interior ministry on Thursday, Singular Logic executives pushed back the time when a 'safe estimate' would emerge by nearly two hours, blaming the unusual circumstances of these particular elections. Originally, the company had said a 'safe' estimate of the result could be expected as early as 9:30 p.m. on Sunday.

They also clarified that obtaining such a 'safe estimate' will depend on whether they have a response from 50 percent of the sample in 5,000 polling stations chosen at random and representative of the 56 electoral constituencies. The announcement of a safe estimate of the election result, with a small deviation of around 0.5 percent, is made possible through the use of Secure Results Transmission (SRT) software being used for the second time in general elections.

Firm executives also noted that a clear picture of the percentage of the vote received by each party will emerge relatively quickly but a definitive answer on whether borderline parties will clear the 3 percent hurdle for getting into Parliament might not emerge until very late into the night.

Concerning security issues, Singular Logic stressed that the system was absolutely secure and had successfully fended off attempted attacks by hackers in the previous election in 2009 without any problems at all.