Algeria
Incumbent president Abdelmadjid Tebboune of the National Liberation Front won a second five-year term in the September 7 presidential election. The National Independent Election Authority (ANIE) released preliminary results that showed Tebboune winning 94.7 percent of the vote, moderate Islamist candidate Abdelaali Hassani Cherif in second with 3.2 percent, and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche in third with 2.2 percent. However, all three candidates released a joint statement criticizing the “irregularities and contradictions” in ANIE’s results. ANIE’s final results gave Tebboune 84.3 percent, Cherif 9.6 percent, and Aouchiche 6.1 percent. Human-rights groups also denounced the crackdown on the opposition, media, and civil society that occurred in the lead-up to the election. ANIE’s official voter-participation rate was 46.1 percent, but this number is disputed and may have been less than a quarter.
Azerbaijan
In the September 1 parliamentary elections, the ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) of President Ilham Aliyev won 68 of the 125 seats in the Milli Majlis (National Assembly). These were the first elections since the country recaptured the Nagorno-Karabakh region from Armenia. Independent candidates won 44 seats, and smaller parties (mostly pro-Aliyev) split the remainder. International observer missions noted that the “restrictive political and legal environment” and “lack of political pluralism . . . undermined the electoral process.” Turnout was 37.3 percent.
Jordan
The Islamist Action Front (IAF), a political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, was the biggest winner in parliamentary elections on September 10. The IAF secured 31 of the 138 seats in the bicameral House of Deputies, more than triple its seat share from elections in 2020 but still not an outright majority. The remaining seats went to representatives of the country’s tribal and progovernment factions. Twenty-seven women won seats. These results follow from 2022 constitutional reforms that strengthened the role of political parties in the traditional monarchy; the reforms also expanded the parliament by 8 seats, reduced the minimum age of candidates, and set gender quotas. Turnout was 32.3 percent.
Kiribati
Elections for the 44 directly elected seats in the 45-seat House of Assembly were held on August 14, with a runoff election five days later. Twenty-seven MPs retained their seats, including pro-China incumbent president Taneti Maamau and opposition leader Tessie Lambourne. Of the seventeen newly elected MPs, five were women — a record high. The parliament is responsible for determining a shortlist of presidential candidates, who the public will vote on in direct elections later this year. Turnout was 58 percent.
Sint Maarten
Snap parliamentary elections for the 15-seat Parliament were held on August 19. The Unified Resilient Sint Maarten Movement (URSM), the Democratic Party (DP), and the National Alliance (NA) all won 3 seats; the Party for Progress (PFP) and the United People’s Party (UP) secured 2 each; and both the National Opportunity Wealth (NOW) party and the Soualiga Action Movement (SAM) won one. The snap elections were triggered when the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Luc Mercelina lost its majority. The previous elections took place in January of this year. Turnout was 60.8 percent.
Sri Lanka
In the country’s presidential election on September 21, Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Marxist-leaning People’s Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna or JVP) party won with 42.3 percent of the vote, up from the 3.2 percent he won in 2019. Leader of the Opposition Sajith Premadasa, who heads the Samagi Jana Balawegaya party, received 32.8 percent. Since neither frontrunner obtained more than 50 percent, a second tally that took into account ranked-choice votes determined the winner — the first time this has ever happened in a presidential race in the country. Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over in 2022 after popular protests forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of office, took third place, receiving only 17.3 percent. This was the country’s first election since its economic collapse in 2022, and the result was largely seen as a referendum on the previous administration’s handling of the crisis. Turnout was high at 79.5 percent. To learn more about the election, read Marlon Ariyasinghe’s new essay “The Man Who Would Oust a Dynasty.”