Turnout remains around 40 percent in Egypt's presidential election

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi has been reelected for a second term with 92 percent of the vote, state media reported on Thursday citing preliminary results.

Some 23 million of the 60 million registered voters turned out during the three days of polling that ended Wednesday, state-owned newspapers Al-Ahram and Akhbar el-Youm, and the official MENA news agency reported.

El-Sisi is expected to win the election with 21.5 million votes, while his only challenger, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, an el-Sisi supporter, garnered 721,000 votes, Akhbar el-Youm reported.

According to the privately owned al-Masry al-Youm newspaper, el-Sisi has received more than 1.2 million votes so far in the city of Alexandria, while his challenger received less than 40,000.

However, turnout figures, which were the main challenge facing el-Sisi, remain unclear.

A low voter turnout could raise doubts about the election's credibility, which had prompted Egypt's National Election Authority to threaten those who boycotted the vote with a fine of up to 500 pounds (29 dollars) in a bid to push voters to go to polling stations in the hours before the deadline on Wednesday.

The fine is stipulated by law but was not enforced in past elections.

El-Sisi's sole challenger Moussa Mostafa Moussa is a little-known politician whose last-minute bid has been seen as mostly symbolic in order to give the election the appearance of a genuine contest.

Potential serious opponents dropped out of the race or were barred from running, and the opposition called for a boycott of the vote, describing it as a "farce."

The final results are expected to be officially announced on Monday.

El-Sisi came to power in 2014, a year after he led the overthrow of the country's first democratically elected - but divisive - president Mohammed Morsi.

In the first elections in which he has contested in 2014, el-Sisi received 23.8 million votes while his sole opponent Hamdeen Sabahi received some 750,000, almost identical to the preliminary results in 2018 elections. Official voter turnout, described as highly inflated by the opposition, was 41.5 percent.

El-Sisi's backers say he has re-established security in Egypt after years of unrest, while his critics accuse his government of muzzling dissent, arresting and torturing opponents and curbing press freedom, charges the authorities deny.