Incumbent president Hosni Mubarak was re-elected for a fifth consecutive six-year term in office, with official results showing he won 88.6% of the vote.

[1] Under United States pressure, Egypt agreed to allow multi-party elections for the first time.

Egypt's largest Islamic group, the Muslim Brotherhood, was not permitted to field a candidate for the election because the organization is banned by the government, which prohibits political parties with a stated religious agenda.

[3] While many believed Hosni Mubarak's re-election a foregone conclusion, he campaigned seriously, trying to win votes across Egypt.

According to a late August report by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies,[5] media coverage was biased in favour of Hosni Mubarak.

Secondly, the Muslim Brotherhood, believed to be the most popular opposition group in Egypt, was excluded from running in the elections because Mubarak's government had made it officially illegal and barred from major political processes.

In addition, there appeared to be official harassment of the leading opposition candidate Nour, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and arrested in January 2005, on what many observers regarded as trumped-up charges.

He was imprisoned for a short time that year before public and international outcry resulted in his release before trial.

[9][verification needed] Ayman Nour of the El-Ghad Party, one of the most prominent opposition candidates, along with others, has accused the government of not using truly indelible ink on the hands of voters, allowing voters favoring Hosni Mubarak to remove stamps indicating they had voted and return to vote again.

[10][11] Nour also alleged that there was widespread vote-buying, a charge supported by the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, though not otherwise corroborated.

[12] The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, while supporting Nour's claims, has stated that the irregularities were insufficient to require a rerun of the election.

Wael Namara, a spokesman for Ayman Nour of the El-Ghad Party, estimated turnout to be between 10 and 15% in the countryside and from 3 to 5% in the cities.

[19] Late reports from September 8 placed Mubarak's numbers at approximately 72%, based once again on anonymous sources.

However, the Presidential Election Commission rejected his request as baseless on September 8, 2005, a decision that cannot be appealed.

"[20] Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal stated that the elections show that Mubarak has democratic intentions and that elections can take place there without harming stability: "The poll that took place in Egypt refutes the case made by those who claim Egypt is unstable and question its march toward the future.