The second day of voting in Egypt’s constitutional referendum went fairly peacefully, unlike the first day that saw as many as eleven deaths.  And it appears that voters have given the government a clear mandate to strip away the Islamist-friendly clauses added last year by deposed president Mohammed Morsi.

A senior interior ministry official told Egyptian television that the turnout in the vote might exceed 55 percent, which would make it bigger than in past polls.  In the December 2012 constitutional poll held while the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was still in power, only 33 percent of Egypt’s eligible voters took part, and that document was approved by 64 percent of the voters.

Preliminary results indicated that approval of the constitution might be more than 95 percent, although that comes with a caveat.  The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the elections, and turnout was reported to be low in the Islamist group’s strongholds.  If these numbers hold, it puts opposition to Morsi’s constitution at about 2:1.  But once again, “boycott”, so.. we’ll see.

The second half of the two-day vote was calmer than the first.  But a police station was set on fire in a Cairo suburb, and some 400 people were arrested.