Election eve: the Wades "double down."

Now it's a sporting game. Thanks to the Wade father-son team, tomorrow's local elections in Senegal take on a transcendent importance. After spending the last two weeks on separate electioneering tours of the county, President Abdoulaye Wade and son, Karim, have turned the election into a referendum for their party, their coalition and their own political futures. They have bet, double-down, on a popular endorsement to obtain a legitimate mandate.

President Wade's full ahead infrastructure agenda is given a populist gestalt by his son's "Concrete Generation" movement. They have met their political opponents head-on during the last weeks. The president toured the high road, focused on economic issues. Karim hit the ground with "mobilizations" of the Génération du Concret, clad in blue jeans and baseball cap, pushing support for the SOPI coalition forged by the Wades' PDS party.

The stops on their journeys met with a tough, organized opposition, deriding the perceived autocratic tendancies of the Wades. The president was greeted at times by rocks and jeers from those in opposition red armbands, and chased out of some parts of the country according to reports.

Various media have called the election crutial for the political future of Karim Wade, seen as promoted to succeed his father.

Controversy regarding the legitimacy of the elections was heightened by the disqualifation of SOPI's slate in the Djiorbel area and subsequent court challenges to that process. Opponents will be keenly on the lookout for election fraud, having sat out the last local election because of its perception.