Despite chronic economic mismanagement and the restriction of basic freedoms, the party still enjoys wide support, and a fractured opposition has struggled at times to make its case. But President Robert Mugabe and his party were never going to take that chance.
This was a flash poll called in haste, rammed through by a compromised court and conducted under structurally unfair conditions. It was designed with one objective in mind: to secure Zanu-PF's grip on power while lending its rule the appearance of legitimacy.
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Much is made by observers of the absence of violence. On the face of it, they are right. Although there were reports of more subtle intimidation, particularly in rural areas, this was not 2008. To focus on the lack of bloodshed, however, is to miss the point. Mugabe and those around him were clearly aware that violence would not serve their ultimate cause nearly as well as a more subtle fraud. Their strategy was to give opposition parties an electoral mountain to climb by controlling important media outlets, by manipulating the voters' roll and by putting members of the highly partisan security forces in control of key aspects of the process. A tale of peaceful queues and high turnout could then be sold around the world, while any doubt about the final result was eliminated. Observer missions, likely to look a little harder at the meaning of words such as "free and fair", were excluded lest their views contradicted the tranquil narrative.
With a premature endorsement by the African Union observer mission, issued before counting had even begun, and Zanu-PF officials crowing about a landslide, the success of the approach was plain to see.
Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai was having none of it, declaring on Thursday as early indications of a probable Mugabe victory began to come in: "This election has been a huge farce. It's credibility has been marred by administrative and legal violations which affect the legitimacy of its outcome."
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a nonpartisan group of local nongovernmental organisations, said: "Regardless of the outcome, the credibility of the 2013 harmonised elections is seriously compromised by a systematic effort to disenfranchise an estimated million voters." The network noted in particular the exclusion of urban voters, who tend to favour opposition parties, both during the registration process and on election day.
Comprehensive results were still days away when the Mail & Guardian went to press but early returns suggested an implausibly large swing towards Mugabe and his party. The leadership of the MDC and other opposition parties must take some of the responsibility for participating in a process they must have known from the outset was doomed. The facts that are being created as the count comes in will likely prove impossible to overturn.
And so Zimbabwe will continue to limp along, the institutions of its Constitution hollowed out to serve a crony elite. Meanwhile, the battle within Zanu-PF to succeed an aged patriarch will grow fiercer as he grows more frail.
Zimbabwe deserves better than another five years in the half-light between democracy and dictatorship. The Southern African Development Community can still help by refusing to legitimise the theft that has taken place under the noses of its observers, but there is little appetite around the world for this fight. That is the cold reality of one last comprehensive victory for Robert Gabriel Mugabe.