Turkey is heading to a runoff election after President Tayyip Erdogan scored a better-than-expected result in Sunday’s vote and has a significant lead over his rival, but not enough for the required majority.

Neither Erdogan nor opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 50 percent and will face off again on May 28.

Kilicdaroglu, who announced he would ultimately win, urged his supporters to be patient and accused Erdogan’s party of meddling in the vote count and manipulating the announcement of the results.

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Erdogan, who received more votes than the pre-election polls, appeared confident and combative when he addressed his followers.

“We have 2.6 million more votes than our nearest rival. We expect it to increase even more when the results are official,” Erdogan said.

After 97 percent of the ballots were counted, Erdogan leads with 49.39 percent, and Kilicdaroglu has 44.92 percent, the state news agency Anadolu reported. The State Election Commission announced that 49.49 percent of voters voted for Erdogan after 91.93 percent of ballots were counted.

The third, nationalist candidate Sinan Ogan won 5.3 percent of the vote and could decide the winner, depending on who he supports in the second round.

In the parliamentary elections held parallel to the presidential elections, the People’s Alliance, made up of Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party, the nationalist MHP and others, achieved a better-than-expected result and is well on its way to a majority. After 93 percent of the ballots have been counted, he is expected to have 324 of the 600 mandates.

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Kilicdaroglu’s National Alliance of six opposition parties, including the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Ataturk, wins 211 seats.

The Labor and Freedom Alliance, led by the pro-Kurdish Green-Left Party, will have 65 seats in parliament, according to current data.

Initial results from Sunday’s presidential election put Erdogan in a comfortable lead, but as counting continued, his lead narrowed as expected. A run-off election on May 28 is almost certain and the electoral verdict on Erdogan’s two-decade rule is being delayed for two weeks.

Opinion polls before the election had given Kilicdaroglu a slight lead, and two polls on Friday even showed him above the 50 percent threshold. However, the majority had announced a close race.

The presidential election will decide not only who leads Turkey, but also how it is governed, where its economy is headed amid a deep cost-of-living crisis and the shape of its foreign policy.

The elections, which are also parliamentary, are closely watched in Western capitals, in the Middle East, in NATO and in Moscow.

The defeat of Erdogan, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most important allies, is likely to upset the Kremlin but comfort the Biden administration, as well as many European and Middle Eastern leaders who have had troubled relations with Erdogan.

Turkey’s longest-serving leader turned the NATO member and Europe’s second-largest country into a global player, modernizing it through major projects like new bridges, hospitals and airports and building a military industry that is the envy of foreign countries.

His unstable economic policy of low interest rates, which triggered a spiraling cost of living crisis and inflation, left him the victim of voter anger. His government’s slow response to a devastating earthquake in southeastern Turkey that killed 50,000 people further angered voters.

Kilicdaroglu has promised to steer Turkey on a new course by reviving democracy after years of state repression, returning to orthodox economic policies, strengthening institutions that have lost autonomy under Erdogan’s firm pressure and rebuilding fragile ties with the West.