The mainstream MDC faction said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won 50.3 percent of the presidential vote and Mugabe 43.8 percent according to its own tallies.
CALL FOR PATIENCE
Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper said ZANU-PF and the MDC's Tsvangirai faction had agreed that their candidates or chief election agents would be present at the start of the presidential vote count once results come in from provinces.
"We therefore would like to urge the nation to remain patient as we go through this meticulous verification process," the newspaper's Web site quoted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi as saying.
Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe's former information minister and an independent parliament member, said authorities were not coping with defeat and chiefs of security forces, who have said they would not accept an opposition victory, were anxious.
"You have generals who unwisely, or rather foolishly, told the world that they would only salute one candidate, who happened to have lost the election," he told reporters.
MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti said Tsvangirai had an absolute majority, enough for outright victory, but he would accept a second round runoff against Mugabe "under protest".
Analysts said the president was likely to be humiliated in a runoff and the parliamentary vote defeat would remove some of his power of patronage - a plank of his long and iron rule.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga said in a telephone interview with Sky television : "No one is panicking around President Mugabe. The army is very solidly behind our president, the police force as well."
Mugabe's spokesman, George Charamba, said the MDC was in contempt of the law by announcing results. "You are drifting in very dangerous territory and I hope the MDC is prepared for the consequences," he said.
The government appears to have been preparing the population for a runoff by revealing its own projections showing a second round would be required in the statutory three weeks after last Saturday's vote.
Both Tsvangirai and the government have dismissed widespread speculation that the MDC was negotiating with ZANU-PF for a managed exit for Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1980.
Mugabe was unlikely to make a negotiated exit but go down fighting in the second round, analysts said.
"He is not the type that quietly walks away into the sunset," a senior Western diplomat said in Harare.
