African Election Maps

[Sir John Johns]

A thread to post maps about a very obscure and underrated topic: maps of election results in African countries (except South Africa which has already its own dedicated topic). Results are often hard to find (if not totally unavailable) as are maps of administrative divisions, but, excluding fake elections in the dictatorial states, African elections are much more interesting and fascinating than widely assumed.

For the moment, I will mostly repost maps I have already posted on this website or elsewhere on the Internet but maybe, in the future, could I post new stuff. The idea is to have a place where a maximum number of maps dealing with elections in African countries (at least the most interesting ones) could be found without to have to browse through the Internet or through this forum's numerous threads dedicated to a specific African election.

Other people are welcomed to post their own contributions even if I fear I would be the only poster in this thread.

Sierra Leone 2018 Presidential Election

Presidential, legislative, and local elections were held on March 7, 2018 in Sierra Leone. The President of Sierra Leone is elected to a five-year term in office – renewable once – by a two-round system in which a presidential candidate needs to win over 55% of the vote in the first round to avoid a runoff. Members of the Parliament are elected by FPTP in 132 single-member constituencies with 14 additional seats being reserved for non-partisan paramount chiefs who are indirectly elected.

This election was a turning point for Sierra Leone's political history with the defeat of the ruling All People's Congress (APC) – which used to be the single party between 1978 and 1991 – after a decade of political domination. Some predicted a possible breach of the quasi-duopoly exerted on Sierra Leonean political life since the 1990s by the APC and its arch-rival, the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), which dominated the political life from 1951 to 1967 and controlled the presidency between 1996 and 2007 under the late Ahmad Tejan Kabbah; this however largely failed to materialize even if neither the APC nor the SLPP were able to win the presidency in the first round.

Background



Incumbent president Ernest Bai Koroma (APC), in office since 2007, had been previously called by his supporters to change the constitution and remove presidential term limits but, in the end, he was unable to do so and, consequently, is unable to run for a third term. He was however widely expected to keep an important political role in Sierra Leone in case the APC candidate would have won the presidential contest.



Koroma was initially very popular as his first administration proved quite successful, expanding the social programs and launching an ambitious program to rebuild the country's infrastructure (notably roads) left in shambles by an eleven-year civil war. Thanks to this policy of large-scale works and a good economic climate, Koroma was easily reelected in 2012 with 58.7% of the vote against 37.4% for Julius Maada Bio, a former military head of state and the SLPP candidate.

After a promising start marked by a vigorous economic growth, Koroma's second term in office ultimately proved to be a failure as Sierra Leone experienced economic downturn provoked by the collapse of global commodity prices and as the country faced in 2014-2015 an Ebola outbreak, which killed nearly 4,000 Sierra Leoneans and deteriorated further the economic situation. Sierra Leone was also badly affected in 2017 by disastrous floods, which killed over 1,100 people. Koroma has been widely criticized for what has been considered as his ineffective response to both the Ebola outbreak and the floods.

Furthermore, the Koroma administration was unable to significantly reduced poverty (Sierra Leone remains one of the poorest countries in the world) and to fight the widespread rampant corruption; while Koroma had been elected on an anti-corruption platform, his government was embroiled in a series of scandals including the vanishing of one third of the budget allocated to the fight against the Ebola outbreak and the misappropriation of part of the international aid provided to combat the epidemic. A government-sponsored anti-corruption commission was established but actually achieved little.

Like many other African leaders, Koroma had in recent years strengthen relations with China, receiving in exchange funds to finance the building of two controversial projects – a toll highway and an international airport in Freetown – which have been both described by the opposition as white elephants plagued by corruption.

Koroma was also criticized for his perceived authoritarianism, the 2015 unconstitutional sacking of vice president Samuel Sam-Sumana, and for his alleged aspiration to run for a third term. Under Koroma, the Sierra Leonean government also displayed heavy favoritism toward the northern ethnic groups, notably the Temne, to which Koroma belongs to: Makeni, the president's native town, is the only place in Sierra Leone where residents enjoy uninterrupted power supply.

As a consequence, Koroma leaves office with a very diminished popularity, enabling thus a victory of the opposition.

The presidential candidates

Sixteen candidates are running for president, the main ones being:

Samura Kamara, 66, was the candidate of the ruling APC and Koroma's designated heir. An economist by training, he started his political career in 1996 by serving as financial secretary in the short-lived administration of Julius Maada Bio, his main challenger in the 2018 election. In the Koroma administration, he chaired the central bank (2007-2009) before holding the portfolio of finance (2009-2012), a post in which he played a decisive role in defining Koroma's Agenda for Prosperity. From 2012 to 2017, he was foreign minister and was the main architect of the rapprochement with China.

A Temne like Koroma, the tepid and low-profile Samura Kamara was selected by the outgoing president over 25 other pre-candidates that notably included some bigwigs of the APC like attorney general Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara or mining tycoon and Koroma's own cousin John Bonoh Sisay. By thus sidelining the most renowned figures of the party and selecting a rather unknown technocrat, Koroma allegedly planned to continue to rule the country through a proxy president; Koroma had however publicly denied he would become the power behind the throne in case of Kamara's victory. In any case, the nomination of Kamara as the presidential candidate wasn't met without reluctance inside the APC, with some segments of the ruling party considering him as too closely linked to the unpopular outgoing president and others being disgruntled by the selection of another Temne.

Julius Maada Bio, 53, was the candidate of the SLPP, the main opposition party. A military and a Mende hailing from the southern part of Sierra Leone, Bio took part in the 1992 coup that toppled the dictatorial APC government and established a military junta headed by the young (25) Valentine Strasser. Having become the 'number two' of the regime, Bio overthrow Strasser in January 1996 and handed over power to the democratically elected Kabbah three months later.

After having pursued studies in the US, Bio returned to Sierra Leone and joined the ranks of the SLPP. In 2011, he was became the presidential candidate of that party but was defeated by Koroma in a landslide. After bitter internal infighting, which led to a split, Bio was again selected as the SLPP presidential candidate in late 2017. Dubbing himself as the 'Father of Democracy', Bio was running on an anti-corruption platform, promising notably to end the toll highway project. He was however also criticized for his association with the Strasser regime with some questioning his democratic credentials and for the fact that he hadn't hold any formal employment since he had left power in 1996.

Kandeh Yumkella, 58, was the candidate of the National Grand Coalition (NGC) and wanted to be the surprise of the election. A diplomat and a Susu born in the northwest part of Sierra Leone, he made a brilliant career in the UN, notably serving as director general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and as chairman of UN-Energy. The son of a founder of the SLPP, he unsuccessfully seek the nomination of this party before leaving it in late 2017 to launch his own political party with other disgruntled members of the SLPP. The APC unsuccessfully tried to nullify his candidacy on the grounds he had dual Sierra Leonean and American nationality.

A charismatic orator and very active on the social networks, Yumkella was also widely seen as the candidate with the most articulate program, promising to fight corruption, improve education, and create jobs for the unemployed youth. As such, he was clearly the favored candidate of the business and educated elite who liked also his opposition to ethnic politics.

Samuel Sam-Sumana, 55, was the candidate of the newly founded Coalition for Change (C4C), a breakaway party from the APC. Despite lacking any political experience, he was selected in 2007 as Koroma's running mate and served as the country's vice president after the latter's election. A controversial figure, Sam-Sumana was accused of having fund Koroma's campaign by diverting economic investments and of having accepted bribery. Nonetheless kept on the APC presidential ticket in 2012, he was however unconstitutionally removed from the vice presidency and expelled from the APC in 2015 after having been accused, among other things, of having plot to murder a minister, try to set up a breakaway party, and lie about his education and religious background.

After an exile in the United States, Sam-Sumana returned to Sierra Leone, apparently with the intent to take revenge from the APC and deprived it of an electoral victory. Sam-Sumana was hailing from the Kono district, a mining area which is also a 'swing district'.

Mohamed Kamarainba Mansaray, 42, was the candidate of the Alliance Democratic Party (ADP), a party he founded in 2015 after having left the APC. By the time of the election, a vocal opponent to the Koroma administration, he saw the headquarters of his party being burnt down in August 2017 and was briefly arrested for unlawful arms possession.

Musa Tarawally, 51, was a businessman and the candidate of the Citizens Democratic Party (CDP) after having been member of both the SLPP and the APC. Successively minister of internal affairs and minister for lands in the Koroma administration, he was relieved of his duties after his involvement in a corruption case.

Charles Margai, 72, was the candidate of the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC). Belonging to a politically very influential lineage (his uncle was Sierra Leone's first prime minister and his father was also prime minister), Margai left the SLPP in 2006 to launch his own party under which banner he ran for president in 2007, placing a respectable third with 13.9%; in the concomitantly held legislative election, the PMDC won 10 seats out of 124, becoming the third largest political force in Sierra Leone. These impressive results were however quickly blown up by Margai himself when he decided to endorse Koroma in the runoff, a decision that angered many of his followers and led to the rapid demise of the PMDC. Indeed, in the 2012 presidential election, the candidacy of Margai fell into complete irrelevancy when it received only 1.3% of the vote; that same year, the PMDC lost all his parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, Margai ran again for president, probably his last candidacy.

Femi Claudius-Cole, 55, was one of the two only women running for president. A nurse, she was the candidate of the newly formed Unity Movement.

Ngobeh Gbandi Jemba was the other woman running for president. She was the candidate of the now irrelevant Revolutionary United Front Party (RUFP), the successor of the bloody RUF guerrilla movement that played an important role in the civil war in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

First Round Results

Final results as proclaimed by the National Electoral Commission:

Julius Maada Bio (SLPP) 43.3%
Samura Kamara (APC) 42.7%
Kandeh Yumkella (NGC) 6.9%
Samuel Sam-Sumana (C4C) 3.5%
Mohamed Kamarainba Mansaray (ADP) 1.1%
all other candidates under 1%

Map of results on ward level:



Probable errors as there were some discrepancies in the distribution of poll stations by ward given by the various Sierra Leonean institutional websites. Due to a lack of sources, the boundaries of the three wards of Bonthe City are very approximate.

As usual in Sierra Leone, the results closely follow the ethnic lines (the traditional rivalry between the Mende and the Temne is still the major political divide) with a strong polarization between the northern and the southern part of the country.

The APC continues to be quasi-hegemonic in the North, notably in the Temne-populated areas where Kamara received his best results (especially in his birthplace of Makeni City). Freetown, which was usually considered as a swing area, was won by the APC candidate by a strong margin; (57.8% of the vote against only 33.1% for Bio in the urban part of the capital): Kamara swept every ward but one in the Western Area.

Meanwhile, the SLPP continued to totally dominate the political landscape in the South with Bio largely overperforming in the Mende-populated areas. It's however interesting to note that the SLPP candidate had some support in the northernmost part of the country, especially in the Yalunka-populated areas.

Yumkella's appeal to urban voters was clearly overstated: he won only 7% in the urban part of Freetown (barely above his national average) and received over 10% of the vote in only seven wards. Conversely, and despite all the talks about how he opposed tribalism and would have renew political practices, Yumkella, like every major candidate, received by far his best results (43.2%) in his native Kambia district, the only district he won. Otherwise, he had pretty strong results in Falaba (16.2%), Koinadugu (14.8%), and Port Loko (11.7%) - all of them being located in the northern part of the country – but underperformed in the southern part of Sierra Leone.

Unsurprisingly, Sam-Sumana was a major player in only one district, his native Kono, which he won with 50.6% of the vote. In the other districts of the country, he received only negligible results.

Runoff Results

Julius Maada Bio (SLPP) 51.8%
Samura Kamara (APC) 48.2%

Unfortunately, the Electoral Commission, which was supposed to publish online the full results, never did it and no its website is down. So no maps.

[ottermax]

Wow this is amazing and incredibly informative!

These maps can be incredibly helpful towards explaining some of the recurring themes of flawed democracy in Africa... a reliance of ethnic / regional loyalties to win elections which makes it difficult to develop a more inclusive democracy.

Would be awesome to see some maps of Uganda!

Thank you.

[Sir John Johns]

Thanks. I have checked the website of the Ugandan Electoral Commission, which is really good by African standards, and found results of the latest presidential election on district level. I will try to make a map of this election when I have some times (currently working on other things).


Now maps of Benin, my favorite African country, often considered as the poster child of successful democratic transition even if the general situation is far from being perfect.

Ethnic composition (2013 census):

Fon and related 39.2% (the Fon themselves account for 17.6%, the largest subgroup in Benin)
Aja and related 15.2%
Yoruba and related 12.3%
Bariba and related 9.2%
Peulh (Fula) and related 7%
Ottammari (or Tammari) and related 6.1%
Yoa-Lopka and related 4%
Dendi and related 2.5%





African countries are generally said to be ethnically very diverse but this is not an exaggeration when speaking about Benin: the country is indeed divided into forty-two ethnic subgroups belonging for most of them to eight major ethno-linguistic groups. The most important of them is the Fon group which accounts for 39.2% of the total population and is to be found in the southern part of the country. The Fon founded the powerful Dahomey kingdom in the seventeenth century and still exercise a large cultural and political influence with the Fon language being Benin's lingua franca. Related to the Fon are the Adja (15.2% of the total population) living in the southwestern part of Benin along the border with Togo from which they originally came from. The Yoruba (12.3% of the total population) live in the central part of Benin and in also in the southeast along the border with Nigeria.

The Bariba (9.2% of the total population) are mostly concentrated in the northeast part of Benin around their cultural capital, Nikki; they emigrated from today Nigeria to Benin in the sixteenth century. Also in the Northeast are living the pastoral/nomadic Peulh (or Fulani) people, which account for 7.0% of the country's total population. The Ottamari (or Batammariba), who originally came from present-day Burkina Faso, settled in the Atakora Mountain Range, fleeing slaver raids. The Yoa-Lokpa (4.0%) reside in the center/north of Benin while the Dendi (2.5%), who came from present-day Mali in the sixteenth century, are to be found in the northernmost part of the country.

Also worth mentioning the tiny but politically very influential Agudas, who are the descendants of Brazilian freed slaves (often of Yoruba extraction) who returned to Africa during the nineteenth century. There are also foreign ethnic groups (Nigerians, Malians, Togolese, Lebanese, French) who mostly reside in Cotonou and the other major cities of Benin.

Despite its incredible ethnic diversity, Benin has been preserved from major ethnic tensions even if there is a historical resentment against the Fons, who were involved in slave trading at the time of the Dahomey kingdom. Also, the northern ethnic groups, despite periodic rivalries, supported en masse in the presidential election whichever candidate that would favor the interests of the economically and politically marginalized northern part of the country.

Religions:

Islam 27.7%

Catholicism 25.5%
Celestial Christianity 6.7%
Methodist Protestantism 3.4%
Other Christianities 9.5%

Vodoun 11.6%
Other traditional religions 2.6%

Other religions 2.6%
No religion 5.8%





A religiously very diverse country, Benin has been so far spared by the bloody sectarian violence that had affected several other African countries, notably the neighboring Nigeria.

The main faith is Christianity, which is however divided in numerous churches and sects. Catholicism is the major christian denomination, accounting for 25.5% of the total population, and its followers are mainly found in the southern part of the country, especially in Cotonou. The Catholic Church has always played a major political role; for example, Archbishop of Cotonou Isidore de Souza was the president of the National Conference that presided over restoration of democracy in the early 1990s. 3.4% of the Beninese population are followers of Methodism, which had been the first Christian religion introduced in Benin (in the nineteenth century by British missionaries coming from Nigeria). “Other Protestants” (who seems to be mostly Pentecostals) also form 3.4% of the population; like the Methodists, they are mostly found in the southern part of the country. “Other Christians” are mainly followers of African-initiated churches and sects like the Nigeria-based Cherubim and Seraphim Church; they constitute 9.5% of the population. This number doesn't include however members of the Celestial Church of Christ, a native christian cult founded in Porto-Novo in 1947 which has experienced a tremendous growth in recent years. Celestial Christians account for 6.7% of the population and are mostly founded in the Ouémé département where the religion was founded.

Muslims account for 27.7% of the population and overwhelmingly live in the northern part of the country where this religion has experienced a noticeable growth in recent years. Wahhabism and other forms of Islamic fundamentalism remain marginal and, unlike what has happened in Nigeria, there is no major conflict with Christians nor an important movement in favor of institution of sharia law.

The most important native religion is Vodoun (in which lie the roots of Haitian Voodoo), which is practiced by 11.6% of the population and is mostly to be found in the southwestern part of Benin. In recent years, the traditional Vodoun cults have been concurrenced by the emergence of the Thron church which originated from northern Ghana. The Ottamari also practiced their own traditional animist religion; their most important divinity of their pantheon is Kuyé, the Sun-God. 5.8% of Beninese have no religion.

Beninese presidential election, 2016

Beninese electors voted on March 6, 2016, to elect a new president as incumbent Thomas Boni Yayi (elected in 2006 and re-elected in 2011) was term-limited.

A record number (33) of candidates were running for president; they were 14 in 2011 and 26 in 2006. This high number illustrates the level of fragmentation of the Beninese political landscape: there are over 200 registered parties, almost all of them being non-ideological and regionally-based. The absence of ideology has led Beninese political parties to constantly switch sides and to resort to vote-buying. As a consequence, political parties have become weak over the years: both Mathieu Kérékou (president between 1996 and 2006) and Boni Yayi won their first term in office running as independent candidates. Quite tellingly the majority of the presidential candidates in 2016 never had held an elective office: the front-runners of this election were rich businessmen, technocrat economists or retired generals.

The 2015 legislative election was won by a broad anti-Boni Yayi coalition comprising the four major opposition forces: the Democratic Renewal Party (PRD), the Benin Rebirth (RB), the Union Makes the Nation (UN), and the National Alliance for Democracy (AND). For more detailed on the 2015 legislative election see the dedicated thread





As I have mentioned earlier, political parties in Benin easily switch sides: in a twist of events, the PRD and the RB renounced to field their own presidential candidates choosing instead to back Boni Yayi's heir-apparent, Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou. Meanwhile, both the UN and the AND basically imploded after these two political alliances had failed to select a single candidate to endorse.

Major candidates:

Lionel Zinsou, 61, was the candidate of Boni Yayi's Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin (FCBE); he is also endorsed by the PRD, the RB, part of the AND, and part of the UN. The son of a Beninese physician and a French white mother, he was also the nephew of former president (1968-1969) Émile Derlin Zinsou. A native of Paris and a French-Beninese dual citizen, he spent the major part of his life in France where he successively worked as a speechwriter for French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, as a director for Danone, and as a banker for Rothschild and PAI investment funds. Zinsou entered in Beninese politics in June 2015 when he was appointed prime minister by Boni Yayi to everyone's surprise. Despite his lack of political experience and a rather weak record as prime minister, he was nominated over veteran politicians as the FCBE's presidential candidate.

Thanks to the support of the powerful FCBE machine (the closest thing to a national party, but still stronger in the northern part of the country from where Boni Yayi comes from) and of the PRD (strong in the Southeast around Porto Novo) and the RB (strong in the southern department of Zou and in Cotonou), Zinsou is one of the few candidates with a national base, at least on paper. He was seen as a strong contender who could possibly win the election “with a K.O.” (being elected in first round). Due to his dual citizenship, his French white mother, and his close links with Fabius (who was until recently the French foreign minister), Zinsou was the target of xenophobic and racist attacks and he was perceived as the “candidate of France”.

Patrice Talon, 57, was a cotton tycoon with no electoral experience. Talon used to be the main funder of Boni Yayi's two presidential campaigns but he broke with the outgoing president in 2012 when he was indicted, firstly for embezzlement of public funds and later for having tried to poison Boni Yayi. Talon then fled to France to escape justice and only returned in Benin in October 2015 after the charges against him had been dropped. A native of Ouidah (in southern Benin), Talon received the endorsement of the northern-based Sun Alliance. He was also supported by Candide Azannaï, an influential UN deputy from Cotonou.

Sébastien Ajavon aka “ASG” (from his full name Ajavon Sébastien-Germain), 51, was a rich businessman with no previous electoral experience. A self-made man without higher education, he made a fortune in the poultry industry and he used his vast wealth to fund philanthropic causes. From 2006, he served as the president of the national employers' association. A native of Djeffa, in Southeast Benin, Ajavon was running as an independent with the support of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), a component of the UN (and also part of the Socialist International) whose electoral base is to be found in the Aja-populated Southwest. Ajavon also received the support of various prominent politicians including the influential FCBE deputy for Parakou (in northeast Benin), Rachidi Gbadamassi, and the leader of the now apparently defunct United Democratic Forces (FDU), Mathurin Nago, a deputy from the southeast department of Mono. Ajavon claimed to be a “100% Beninese” candidate, in contrast with the French-born Zinsou, but he entrusted the management of his campaign to Havas, a French media advertising company belonging to Vincent Bolloré, a French businessman with strong economic interests in Africa.

Abdoulaye Bio Tchané, 63, was the candidate of the Alliance for a Triumphant Benin (ABT), his northern-based political vehicle. A native of the northern department of Donga, “ABT” was an economist who had worked for the Central Bank of West African States and for the International Monetary Fund. From 2008 to 2011, he succeeded Yayi Boni as president of the West African Development Bank. “ABT” already ran for president in 2011, placing third with 6.1%.

Pascal-Irénée Koupaki, 64, was the candidate of the newly founded New Awareness Rally (RNC). A native of Ouidah, he was an economist by training and, similarly to “ABT”, he worked for the Central Bank of West African States and for the International Monetary Fund. “PIK” entered Beninese politics in 2006 when he was appointed finance minister by Boni Yayi. He later served as minister for development and prime minister until 2013, when he broke with Boni Yayi.

Robert Gbian aka “GGR” (for General Gbian Robert), 63, was a retired general who served as Boni Yayi's director of military cabinet between 2006 and 2012, when he broke with the president. A native of the northern department of Borgou, he played a key role in the establishment of the Sun Alliance under which banner he was elected a deputy for Borgou in 2015. As the Sun Alliance chose to endorse Patrice Talon, Gbian ran as the candidate of the recently created Generations for a Republican Governance (GGR).

Fernand Amoussou, 60, was also a retired general and the candidate of the Alliance of Future Forces. A native of the southwest part of the country, he served as chief of staff of the Beninese Armed Forces between 2000 and 2005 before being appointed commander of the United Nations Forces in Côte d'Ivoire. Fernand Amoussou was the brother of former PSD leader Bruno Amoussou and consequently received the endorsement of various PSD dissidents.

Issa Salifou, 53, was the owner of a media company and the candidate of the Union for Relief (UPR). A deputy from the northern department of Alibori, he was reelected to this post in 2015 under the banner of the Sun Alliance but broke later with this party. In 2011 he already ran for president, placing fourth with 1.25%.

Aké Natondé, 46, was a FCBE deputy from the southern department of Zou who served under Boni Yayi as minister of secondary and technical education and as minister of public works and transportation. He ran as the candidate of Chemin du Bénin (“Path of Benin”).

Nassirou Bako-Arifari, 53, was the candidate of the Amana (“the Truth”) party. He served as foreign minister under Boni Yayi from 2011 to 2015 before being elected deputy from the northern department of Alibori.

Results

First round results were:

Lionel Zinsou 28.4%
Patrice Talon 24.7%
Sébastien Ajavon 23.0%
Abdoulaye Bio-Tchané 8,7%
Pascal-Irénée Koupaki 5.9%
Robert Gbian 1.5%
Fernand Amoussou 1.2%
Issa Salifou 1.0%
Aké Natondé 0.9%
Nassirou Bako Arifari 0.6%
all other candidates under 0.5%

As I have finally found a shapefile of Beninese arrondissements (corrected and completed with data from the “Cahier des villages et quartiers de ville” from the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Analysis (INSAE), I have made many first round maps on the arrondissement-level (beware, I don't used the same colors than for the legislative elections).























Runoff results

A runoff was held on March 20, 2016, which was won by Patrice Talon with 65.4% of the votes. Unfortunately, I can't find results on arrondissement- or commune-level, so I could only made a map on department-level.

[Sir John Johns]

I have edited my post about the Beninese 2016 presidential election to add more description about the ethnic groups and the religions of Benin.


Senegalese Legislative Election, 2017

A parliamentary election was held in Senegal on July 30, 2017 in order to elect the 165 members of the National Assembly, the Senegalese unicameral legislature.

Deputies were elected using a mixed voting system. 105 deputies were elected in 53 electoral constituencies (corresponding to the 45 Senegalese départements and the 8 newly created constituencies for Senegalese citizens living abroad) using a winner-take-all system in which the list which finished ahead took all seats of the constituency, the big prize being the Dakar département and its 7 seats. The remaining 60 seats were allocated through party-list PR in a national constituency using the simple quotient and greatest remainders rules.

The legislative election was considered as a test for the Senegalese political parties, two years before the presidential election, planned to be held in 2019. Incumbent president Macky Sall (elected in 2012) was seeking to keep his overwhelming parliamentary majority (119 seats out of 150 in the outgoing National Assembly), campaigning on a rather solid record in government (robust economic growth, institutional reforms) and prepare the ground for a re-election in 2019.

It quickly appeared that the contest would be a cakewalk for the ruling coalition as the two main opposition blocs failed to constitute a broad electoral alliance and ran instead separately. Therefore, the legislative poll was considered as a test to determine who would be Macky Sall's main challenger in 2019: Karim Wade, the son of former president (2000-2012) Abdoulaye Wade, who then resided in Qatar after having been sentenced to jail for corruption and having been pardoned by Macky Sall; or Khalifa Sall (no relation with the president), the mayor of Dakar (elected in 2009 and re-elected in 2014), who was then in jail for corruption and whose trial is still ongoing.

The electoral campaign was plagued by violence (notably in the Dakar area) and the electoral authorities showed their incompetence and their amateurism: indeed the Autonomous National Electoral Commission (CENA) issued only 70% of the newly introduced biometric identity cards required to vote. As a consequence, the Senegalese government decided, in a controversial move, to permit voters to vote by presenting only their old identity card, their old electoral card or their passport and a mandatory 'registration receipt' (récépissé d'inscription) proving that voters were actually registered on the rolls. The opposition parties claimed then that this would facilitated electoral fraud in favor of the ruling coalition.

There were a record number of 47 lists (up from 24 in 2012) which were running.

The three most important were:

• Benno Bokk Yakaar (BBY) ('United in Hope'). The ruling coalition was formed in 2012 in the wake of Macky Sall's election to the presidency. Its main components were: Macky Sall's own Alliance for the Republic (APR), a nominally liberal party founded by Sall in 2008 after his departure from Abdoulaye Wade’s PDS; the once powerful Socialist Party (PS), led by Ousmane Tanor Dieng (who ran for president in 2012 and got 13.6%), which is officially part of the Socialist International and which ran the country from the independence until 2000 under presidents Léopold Sédar Senghor and Abdou Diouf; the Alliance of Progress Forces (AFP), a self-described social-democratic party whose founder and leader is Moustapha Niasse, a very influential former prime minister under both Diouf (1983) and Wade (2000-2001) who then held the presidency of the National Assembly – Niasse ran previously for president in 2007 and 2012, winning respectively 5.9% and 13.2% of the vote; the Democratic League/Movement for the Labour Party (LD/MPT), which was originally founded as – but was no longer – a marxist-leninist party; the National Union for the People (UNP) led by Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, a former prime minister (2009-2012) under Wade; and the Party of Independence and Labour (PID), an organization which described itself as a communist party. The BBY top candidate on the national list was Prime Minister Mahammad Dionne, who was campaigning on Macky Sall’s record in office.

• Coalition Gagnante/Wattu Senegaal (CGWS) ('Winning Coalition'/'Save Senegal'). One of the two main opposition alliances, it was formed earlier in 2017 under the guidance of former president Abdoulaye Wade, 91, after the failure of the latter to reach an agreement with Khalifa Sall’s opposition coalition.
  
  The main component of the coalition was Wade’s Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), which had been founded in 1974 and is officially a member of the Liberal International. The PDS had then already designated its candidate for the 2019 presidential election: Karim Wade. The CGWS was also comprised by Bokk Gis Gis, a party led by Pape Diop, a former mayor of Dakar (2002-2009) and a former president of the National Assembly (2002-2007); Diop’s decision to ally with Wade was however rejected by an important faction of his own party. Also divided was the And Jëf/African Party for Democracy and Socialism (AJ/PADS) – a party which was originally founded as a Maoist group but had evolved to became a largely non-ideological outfit -: a wing led by Mamadou Diop Decroix was part of the CGWS while the wing led by the historical founder, Landing Savané, expressed its support to Macky Sall. Finally, the Tekki Movement also chose to ally with Wade’s coalition. The Tekki Movement is led by Mamadou Lamine Diallo, a minor presidential candidate in 2007 (he got only 0.5%).
  
  The CGWS top candidate on the national list was the aging Abdoulaye Wade himself, who specially returned from exile in France to take part in the electoral campaign.

• Manko Taxawu Senegaal (MTS) ('United to Assist Senegal'). This opposition alliance was founded in early 2017 and originally included Wade’s PDS; its purposed aim at the time was to force a cohabitation with Macky Sall but this goal was apparently abandoned at the time of the election due to the defection of the PDS and its allies.
  
  The MTS top candidate on the national list was Khalifa Sall, the mayor of Dakar who didn't hide his presidential ambitions for 2019. Elected under the banner of the PS, Khalifa Sall was then detained for corruption (he denied the accusation and claimed to be politically persecuted by Macky Sall) and had campaigned from the Rebeuss jail in Dakar. He was seconded by another PS dissident, Barthélémy Dias, the mayor of Mermoz-Sacré Cœur (a suburb of Dakar), who was also sentenced to jail for having shoot to death a PDS activist during a brawl at the Mermoz-Sacré Cœur town hall in 2011. While apparently not imprisoned, Dias blamed the judicial decision on political persecution by Macky Sall.
  
  Besides of PS dissidents, the MTS also includes: the Grand Party (GP), led by Malick Gabou a former AFP member and a former cabinet minister under Macky Sall; Rewmi, a self-described liberal party founded in 2006 by Idrissa Seck, a politician who served as prime minister (2002-2004) under Wade and was mayor of Thiès from 2002 to 2014; the Front for Socialism and Democracy/Benno Jübel (FSD/BJ) a so-called left-wing party led by Cheikh Bamba Dièye, a former mayor (2007-2014) of Saint-Louis, a minor presidential candidate in 2007 and 2012 (he got respectively 0.5% and 1.9%) and a cabinet minister under Macky Sall; Bes Du Ñakk, a party which was founded as a citizen’s initiative by Mansour Sy Djamil, a Soufi marabout and a prominent opponent to both Wade and Macky Sall.

Noticeable also-ran:

• Convergence Patriotique/Kaddu Askan Wi ('Patriotic Convergence/The People's Voice'). A political alliance which defended a 'third way' between the opposition and the Macky Sall administration. It was led by Abdoulaye Baldé, then mayor of Ziguinchor (in Casamance), who used to serve as defense minister under Wade. Baldé was also the leader of the Union of Centrists of Senegal (UCS). The Patriotic Convergence also included the Social Democratic Party-Jant Bi (PDS-Jant Bi), which was led by Mamour Cissé, a cabinet minister under Wade; and Waato Sita, a party led by Moustapha Guirassy, a former mayor of Kédougou (2009-2014) and a cabinet minister under Wade.
• Parti de l'Unité et du Rassemblement (PUR) ('Rally and Unity Party'). An Islamist party closely linked to the Moustarchidine religious movement, a breakaway faction of the influential Tijaniyyah brotherhood led by Serigne Moustapha Sy, a member of the Sy family which had provided the Tijaniyyah numerous of its general caliphs.
• Osez l'Avenir ('Dare the Future'). A non-aligned political alliance whose leader was the PS dissident Aïssata Tall Sall. A famous lawyer who notably defended Khalifa Sall in his corruption case, Tall Sall was also the mayor of Podor from 2009. She initially participated in the establishment of the MTS alliance but ultimately chose to run alone, which had led some in the opposition to say that she had been bought by the Macky Sall’s administration.
• Ndawi Askan Wi/Alternative du Peuple ('Children of the People/People's Alternative'). An opposition coalition, it was led by Ousmane Sonko, a tax inspector who was sacked by the Macky Sall government for having denounced various corruption cases, the most notable involving the president’s own brother. Sonko decided later to enter into politics and launched his own party, the Patriots of Senegal for Labour, Ethics, and Fraternity (PATEF). The Ndawi Askan Wi coalition also includes the islamist Reform Movement for Social Development (MRDP), the self-described pan-africanist Democratic National Rally (RND), and Bourabé, a party led by Yancouba Sagna, the mayor of Sindian (Casamance).
• Manko Yeesal Senegaal. An opposition alliance led by Modou Fada Diagne, a former cabinet minister under Wade. Diagne left the PDS in 2015 to protest against the designation of Karim Wade as the party’s presidential candidate for 2019 and launched his own party, The Democrats and Reformers (LDR-Yeesal). The LDR-Yeesal was briefly part of the MTS opposition coalition.

Results were:
Benno Bokk Yakaar 49.5% winning 125 seats
Coalition Gagnante/Wattu Senegaal 16.7% winning 19 seats
Manko Taxawu Senegaal 11.7% winning 7 seats
Parti de l'Unité et du Rassemblement 4.7% winning 3 seats
Convergence Patriotique/Kaddu Askan Wi 2.0% winning 2 seats
Ndawi Askan Wi/Alternative du Peuple 1.1% winning 1 seat
Manko Yeesal Senegaal 1.0% winning 1 seat
The 6 remaining seats went to parties that polled under 1%

Here are maps made using the data provided by the Constitutional Council website; unfortunately, my source for the borders of the former communes de ville is pretty sh**tty so some of them are approximate. In any case, you have the broad picture.





Benno Bokk Yakaar won a very large number of communes, getting its best results in the Toucouleur-populated northeastern part of the country. The ruling alliance also performed well in Kaolack and Fatick regions; it received 72.5% of the vote in Fatick, the commune whose Macky Sall used to be the mayor. Conversely, Benno Bokk Yakaar underperformed in the largest cities of the country, notably in Dakar (33.9% of the vote), Thiès (28.6%), and Touba Mosquée (22.7%). It also received poor results in Casamance, especially in the Ziguinchor region and in the Malinke-populated Kédougou and Saraya départements.



Coalition Gagante/Wattu Senegaal received its best results in the areas where the Mourid brotherhood (which was heavily favored by Wade while he was in office) is influential: 62.7% in the holy city of Touba Mosquée where the seat of the brotherhood is located, 43.0% in the neighboring city of Mbacké (birthplace of the founder of the Mourid brotherhood), and 89.5% (the party's best performance) in Khelcom, a place where the Mourid brotherhood owned a model farming community. Wade's alliance also overperformed in Kébémer (50.4%) – Wade's birthplace –, the northwestern part of the country around Saint-Louis (it received 29.3% of the vote in the town itself) and in the southern part of Senegal, including Casamance and Saraya département. The Coalition Gagnante performed better in the Dakar suburbs than in Dakar itself where it received only 16.0% of the vote, under its national result.



Manko Taxawu Senegaal got its best results in three distinct areas: firstly, in Dakar (33.1%), Khalifa Sall's own stronghold; in Thiès (39.3%) whose mayor was an ally of Khalifa Sall; and finally in Goudiry département where it seems to have benefited from the influence of the mayor of Goudiry, Thiédel Diallo, who was arrested for forgery few months before the election. For some reason, it also received a strong 41.0% of the vote in the mining city of Sabodala in Kédougou region.



The Parti de l'Unité et du Rassemblement was stronger in the northwestern part of the country, along the coast, receiving its best results in the western part of the Louga region. It also overperformed in Saint-Louis (7.7%) and in the suburbs of Dakar, reaching 25.2% in Sendou. Not sure here, but this is seems to correlate with the distribution of the Lebu people. I don't know why the Islamist party was so strong in the western part of the Kaffrine region and in the Guinguinéo département.



Convergence Patriotique/Kaddu Askan Wi performed very well in the Kédougou Region where former mayor of Kédougou Moustapha Guirassy had kept a large political influence, winning notably 49.2% in the commune of Kédougou itself. The alliance also overperformed in Casamance, notably in Ziguinchor which it lost by a close margin (32.5% vs. 34.9%) to Benno Bokk Yakaar.
Conversely, the coalition was weak in the Dakar area, winning only 0.5% of the vote.



Ndawi Askan Wi/Alternative du Peuple unsurprisingly received its best result (31.6%) in Sindian (Ziguinchor province) whose mayor was a leading member of the alliance. It slightly overperformed in the Dakar area, winning 1.9% of the vote in the country's capital.



Manko Yeesal Senegaal got its best results in the Louga Region from which its leader came from; notably, it got 35.9% in Darou Mousty, Modou Fada Diagne's birthplace.

Osez l'Avenir received its best results in Podor (42.0%), whose mayor was the leader, and in Thilogne, Matam (37.4%); the top candidate in Matam département was the son of former mayor of Thilogne. The Union Citoyenne/Bunt Bi won two communes: Ranérou, in Matam Region, where it got 49.0% of the vote (for some reason, this alliance performed very well in Ranérou-Ferlo département getting over 35% of the vote in the four communes of the département) and in Oussouye (Ziguinchor Region) whose mayor was then a member of the coalition. The Coalition Senegaal Ca Kanam won one commune, Ndam, in Koumpentoum département where it received 47.4% of the vote while the very touristic commune of Saly Portudal (Mbour département) was won by the Mouvement pour la Renaissance Républicaine whose leader was also the mayor of the commune. Finally, the only commune won by the Alliance pour la Réforme et le Développement/Aar Senegaal was Sagatta Gueth (Kébémer département) whose mayor is the party's leader.

[Sir John Johns]

I was a bit late to make the 2016 Uganda presidential election map I have promised to do so be forgiven I made maps of every single presidential election in Uganda since 1996 . Thery are on district level whose number increased from 39 in 1996 to 112 (!) in 2016.

[Sir John Johns]

Haven't posted these ones here:

[Agafin]

Finally a thread about Africa, amazing! Will be interesting to see if there's any country where ethnicity (or religion in some cases) isn't the leading factor.

Sadly my country (Cameroon) won't be here. The only even remotely free or fair election here was in 1992 (though even that had way too many irregularities, with the incumbent president cheating his way to a 4 point victory). Fraudulent elections ever since and now, a chunk of the country is in a civil war.

Edit: I've just realised that this thread is actually three years old :/

[Sir John Johns]

I have bumped this thread as I intend to post some other maps of African elections in a near future. I have gathered election data from various African countries these last months; what I have to do now is mostly making the base maps and color them (in some cases, putting the results I got through pdf files into Excel tables) and in a few cases finding a shapefile of administrative divisions to draw the base map which is generally the most painful step (if somebody knows by chance where there is a shp file of the communes of Mauritania, this would be cool, I have results of latest presidential election down to… station poll level). A major problem is also the instability of African institutional websites: the website of the Togo Election Commission went offline only four or five months after the election and at one point the second website (our of three or four) of the Niger Election Commission became an English-speaking blog on venomous spiders for whatever reason.

I’m making also maps of unfair or blatantly rigged elections (see the series on Uganda) and I plan to make maps of Cameroonian 2011 and 2018 presidential elections (on commune level for the first one; only on department level for the second one as I have found results by commune). I fully concur that Cameroonian politics are incredibly depressing and that the elections under Biya have been largely a farce, still its results aren’t falsified enough to produce a totally uninteresting map (these were ‘reelections’ with around 70/75% of valid votes, not with 99% of the votes, and with opposition candidates coming ahead in a decent number of communes, so not a monochromatic map).

I guess I should also reposted here the maps of the Madagascar 2013 presidential election with its first round map being a strong contender for the most insane election map ever:

Unshaded version:


Shaded version:


Runoff map:

[Sir John Johns]

Mauritanian presidential election, 2019

Finally managed to find sources to make maps of the latest (2019) presidential election in Mauritania, a particularly overlooked country whose politics and history are still very interesting and quite unique in Africa.

As I wrote in more details in my write-up of the 2018 legislative elections, the population of Mauritania is divided into two main large ethnic group (neither of them being homogeneous): the Arabic-speaking Moors and the ‘Black Mauritanians’ (referred to as Négro-Mauritaniens in French and as Kwār by the Moors) who are speaking languages belonging to the Niger-Congo family (Wolof, Soninke, Pulaar – spoken by Fula and Toucouleur – and Bambara) and are mostly to be found in the Senegal River valley.

The fracture between these two large groups can be summed up (even if things appear much more complicated) as an opposition between, on one hand, Arab-Berber nomadic herders and slavers and, one the other hand, Black sedentary farmers who have been historically the victims of slave raids of the first group. Both groups can be seen, even if that’s an over-simplification, as the heirs of two famous historical entities that originated in present-day Mauritania: the Almoravid dynasty (whose first capital was Azougui, located in Adrar) for the Moors; the Ghana Empire (whose capital, Koumbi Saleh, is located in present-day Hodh El Chargui wilaya) for the ‘Black Mauritanians’.

These two largest groups aren’t homogeneous: the Black Mauritanians are divided into four or five sub-groups (the two largest being the Soninke and the Halpulaar) that include both traditionally sedentary farmers and nomadic herders and used to practice themselves slavery; the Moors have been traditionally organized into a very hierarchical and rigid system of tribes partly following the ethnic origins of their members with the upper levels of the traditional Moorish society being occupied by the so-called ‘White Moors’ (Bīdān, ‘white’) – tribes of light-skinned warriors and marabouts – and the lower levels by the ‘Black Moors’ (Sūdān; not to be confused with the ‘Black Mauritanians’) which are mostly made up by the dark-skinned slaves (‘Abīd) and freed slaves and their descendants (Harātīn).

Since the independence, political and economical power has mostly rested into the hands of the Bīdān group which engaged into a policy of forced Arabization of the country and have purged the administration and the army of its Black Mauritanian elements. The relations between the Moors and the Black Mauritanian rapidly deteriorated (exacerbated by the catastrophic desertification process that pushed the Mauritanian authorities in the 1970s and 1980s to relocate Moorish communities in the Senegal River valley where they clashed with native Black Mauritanian communities over land ownership and distribution) and culminated in the 1980s with a failed coup attempt by Black Mauritanian officers, the establishment of the African Liberation Forces of Mauritania (FLAM) Black Mauritanian guerrilla and a partial ethnic cleansing of the Senegal River valley by Mauritanian authorities that led to the expulsion of thousands of Black Mauritanians toward Senegal and Mali (anti-Senegalese violence also happened in Mauritania while anti-Mauritanian violence happened in Senegal). Most of Black Mauritanians refugees have been authorized to return in Mauritania in the late 1990s.

Meanwhile, despite the official abolition of slavery in 1980, the Harātīn are still facing hug economic, social and labor discrimination with half of the community considered still being victim of bonded or forced labor. Fearing being outnumbered by the demographically more dynamic Harātīn and Black Mauritanians or/and being dislodged from power by a hypothetical alliance between the two discriminate groups, the Bīdān-controlled government has stopped published statistics on the demographic weight of each groups. At the time of independence, the Bīdān accounted for 53% of the population, the Harātīn for 27% and the ‘Black Sedentary’ for 20%. Now, it is believed that the Harātīn are making up a plurality (40%) of Mauritanian population with Bīdān and Black Mauritanians accounting for 30% of the population each. The exact status of the Harātīn inside of the Moorish society and its relations with the Black Mauritanians with whom they have not much in common are remaining a debated topic.

One should also underlined the dramatic demographic and social changes that took place in the first decades of the independence when Mauritania rapidly shifted from a predominantly nomad and rural society to a predominantly sedentary and urbanized one. Hence, the share of nomads among population at large has collapsed from 73% in 1965 to only 1.9% in 2013 while the country’s capital, Nouakchott, has saw its population exploding from only 5,800 inhabitants in 1961 to (official numbers but considered as an underestimate) 958,000 inhabitants in 2013. As you can guess, the growth of Nouakchott has been very anarchic and uncontrolled with the development of shantytowns where impoverished Harātīn are crowded in.

Candidates

The candidates in the 2019 presidential election were the following ones:

* Gen. Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was the candidate of the ruling party, the Union for Republic (UPR), a party created ex nihilo in 2009 (but stuffed with veteran politicians coming from a wide range of older parties) to support the candidacy of Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the leader of the military coup that had overthrown in 2008 Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, the president democratically elected the previous year. Ould Abdel Aziz won the 2009 presidential election and was reelected in 2014 (none of these elections nor the 2019 one are considered as free and fair). The chief of the defense staff between 2008 and 2018 and a defense minister in 2018-19, Ould Ghazouani was a close associate and the designated heir of the term-limited Ould Abdel Aziz with whom he participated in the 2005 and 2008 military coups (of course, once elected president, Ould Ghazouani would broke with his predecessor and sent him in jail over corruption allegations). There was never doubt over the victory of Ould Ghazouani who benefited from the support of the state apparatus and of the powerful Bīdān tribal leaders (he was himself born into an influential Sufi marabout family) as well as fraud in his favor, the only suspense was over the extent of said victory.

* Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar was a veteran politician who served twice as prime minister (1992-96 and 2005-07) under military presidents who both came to power through a coup before being appointed an ambassador to Egypt and later to the United Nations by Ould Abdel Aziz. A civilian and a long-time member of the inner circles of power as well as the member of a second-rank Bīdān marabout tribe, Ould Boubacar received the support of Mohamed Ould Bouamatou, a wealthy and powerful businessman and financier of numerous philanthropic organizations, who had broke with the Ould Abdel Aziz regime he initially supported and funded and had been forced to flee into exile. Running as an independent candidate, Ould Boubacar was however endorsed by the National Rally for Reform and Development (RNRD), often referred to as Tawassoul, the main opposition party in Mauritanian Parliament. One of the first Islamist party allowed in Mauritania, Tawassoul benefited from the generous financing of the Gulf monarchies (especially Qatar) and the strong charity networks it had set up.

* A former student leader in the 1970s and once a member of the clandestine Maoist Kadihine Party, Mohamed Ould Maouloud, already a candidate in 2007 (when he received 4.1% of the votes), was running under the banner of the Union of the Forces of Progress (UFP), a leftist party tied to the General Confederation of Mauritanian Workers (CGTM), the country’s main union. A member of the older generation of opponents to successive military regimes perceived as part of the radical opposition, Ould Maouloud has received in this election the support of longtime opponent and leader of the Socialist International affiliate RFD (Rally of Democratic Forces) Ahmed Ould Daddah (also the half-brother of the first president of Mauritania). Still, Ould Maouloud was criticized inside the UFP itself for his decision of allying with the Islamists of Tawassoul for the 2018 legislative elections and his erratic strategy, deciding the boycott of the 2013 legislative elections against the party’s base (leading to the obliteration of the party’s electoral base) and the participation to the 2019 presidential election, a choice denounced by the most radical elements of the party.

* A leading anti-slavery activist, a member of the Harātīn community, the grandson of freed slaves born and the son of nomadic parents who sedentarized in the 1970s, Biram Dah Abeid was running for president for the second time after having received 8.6% of the votes in the 2014 election. A longtime member of the SOS Esclaves antislavery NGO, he was the founder in 2008 of the (legally non-recognized) Initiative for a Revival of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA) which adopted a more confrontational and radical approach to the issue of slavery than previous abolitionist organizations. A vocal opponent to President Ould Abdel Aziz, Biram was imprisoned several times, notably for having publicly burnt a religious legal text justifying slavery and for being a member of non-recognized organization. In 2018, while once more in jail, he was elected a deputy on the list of Sawab (‘the Right Path’), a moribund Baathist party strongly supportive of Saddam Hussein and strongly opposed to Israel with a past of racist rhetoric against dark-skinned Mauritanians, as the registration of his own political party had been rejected. Despite the controversy that arose about such unholy alliance, Biram ran in 2019 for president as an independent candidate but again with the support of Sawab. Prior to the campaign, he reportedly toned down his radical and aggressive rhetoric.

* Kane Hamidou Baba, a member of the Halpulaar community and a native of Tékane (Trarza, lower valley of the Senegal River), was running as the candidate of the Living Together Coalition (CVE), an alliance of small Black Mauritanian parties. Once a close associate of Ahmed Ould Daddah and a member of the Union of Democratic Forces (UFD) and the Rally of Democratic Forces (RFD) – two parties founded by Ould Daddah in the 1990s and 2000s – Kane, who served as a deputy between 2006 and 2013, broke with Ould Daddah to run for president in 2009 (receiving only 1.5% of the vote). In the aftermath of the election, he launched his own party, the Movement for the Refounding (MPR), which failed to achieve any electoral breakthrough. Kane received the endorsement of Samba Thiam, the leader of the Progressive Forces for Change, the successor of the FLAM Black Mauritanian guerrilla movement, who has lived in exile (firstly in Dakar then in New York City) between 1990 and 2013.

* Mohamed Lemine El-Mourteji El-Wavi was a largely unknown tax specialist and official of the public treasury who ran as an independent.

Results

The officials results proclaimed by the Constitutional Council (but rejected by opposition candidates even before the proclamation) were:

Mohamed Ould Ghazaouani (UPR) 52.0%
Biram Dah Abeid (ind.) 18.6%
Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar (ind.) 17.9%
Kane Hamidou Baba (CVE) 8.7%
Mohamed Ould Maouloud (UFP) 2.4%
Mohamed Lemine El-Mourteji El-Wavi (ind.) 0.4%

Unsurprisingly, Ould Ghazaouani was elected president in the first round but with a weaker result than expected (around 60%). Shockingly, Biram, who was predicted to have difficulty to match the result he obtained in 2014, emerged as the most-voted opposition candidate shortly ahead of Ould Boubacar who was widely seen as the best-placed candidate of the opposition, especially after Tawassoul has came ahead of all other opposition parties in the legislative elections of 2018. While Kane received a respectable result, Ould Maouloud scored a major setback, probably spelling the end of an aging generation of opponents which had failed to renew its discourse and to formulate a clear political strategy.



The map is reflecting the comfortable lead of the UPR candidate over a divided opposition with Mohamed Ould Ghazouani coming ahead in most communes of Mauritania.

Going into details, the UPR candidate received a weak result as a whole in the combined nine communes constituting Nouakchott with 34.9% of the votes against 26.7% for Biram, 22.4% for Ould Babacar and 11.4% for Kane. The results here are following the north/south divide of the capital between the northern communes, less poor and populated by Bīdān migrants, and the southern communes, poorest and populated by Harātīn, Black Mauritanians and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Ould Ghazouani notably lost the predominantly Harātīn-populated communes of Sebkha (where he received only 13.0% of the vote and where Ould Boubacar received, by far, its worst result in the capital: 4.7%) and El Mina (20.4%) as well as the under-served and impoverished commune of Riyad (21.1%) which is housing a sizable population of refugees (Mauritanians expelled from Senegal in 1989-91 and Central African nations since the 2010s) to Biram who received respectively 47.0%, 44.9% and 40.6% of the votes. Kane also largely over-performed in these three communes, receiving respectively 33.6%, 22.5% and 22.8% of the votes. These three communes also have the highest density of population in Nouakchott (183 inhabitants per square kilometer for Sebkha, 155 for Riyad and 115 for El Mina in 2000).

Conversely, Ould Ghazouani received its best result in the capital in the commune of Ksar (the historical center) with 46.1% (against 25.9% for Ould Babacar, 18.5% for Biram and only 4.4% for Kane who placed behind Ould Maouloud and his 4.6% there) while receiving 40.1% in Teyarett (against 31.4% for Ould Babacar and 18.0% for Biram); these are relatively old communes which have been settled by Bīdān former nomads from the Adrar. The candidate of the ruling party also received 42.0% of the vote in Tevragh Zeina, the wealthiest commune of the capital (against 22.8% for Ould Babacar, 20.6% for Biram, 7.0% for Kane and 6.9% for Ould Maouloud, the best Nouakchott commune for the UFP candidate) and came ahead in the three communes of Arafat (44.3%), Toujounine (41.4%) and Dar Naïm (37.6%) which have been settled by Bīdān populations from the northern and eastern parts of the country.

Ould Ghazouani also under-performed in Nouadhibou, the country’s second largest city and economical hub, where he received 27.2% of the vote behind Biram who received there 35.5% of the vote; Ould Boubacar placed third with 21.4% and Kane fourth with 13.0%, above his national average.

Similarly, he significantly under-performed in the mining city of Zouerate, in the northern part of the country, where he placed first with only 36.3% of the vote against 30.4% for Ould Babacar, 16.8% for Biram, 12.9% for Kane and 3.2% for Ould Maouloud.

Ould Ghazouani received his best results in the interior of Mauritania, notably in his native Assaba region (96.1% in Boumdeid, his birthplace). These are areas where the most-voted opposition candidate was generally Ould Babacar like in Adel Bagrou (85.9% for Ould Ghazouani, 9.4% for Ould Babacar and 3.7% for Biram), in Atrar (58.0% against 26.5% and 11.5%) or in Guerou (60.1% against 22.6% and 15.0%).

In the Senegal Valley, with mostly only a simplified map of languages to have an idea of the distribution of ethnic communities and indications it is more complicated with areas mixing speakers of several family languages, it appears that Kane tended to place ahead in the areas historically populated by Halpulaar like for example in Bababé, his best commune (63.8% against 23.6% for Ould Ghazouani, 8.1% for Biram and 4.2% for Ould Babacar), or in M’Bagne (45.0% against 28.1% for Biram, 22.4% for Ould Ghazouani and 3.4% for Ould Babacar) losing however the major center of Kaédi to Biram (47.3% for the IRA leader against 28.8% for Kane, 17.4% for Ould Ghazouani and 4.7% for Ould Babacar).

Meanwhile, Biram Dam Abeid tended to prevail over Kane in the areas historically populated by the Wolofs like Rosso (also his birthplace), where he came ahead with 45.3% of the vote against 33.6% for Ould Ghazouani, 12.5% for Ould Babacar and 7.0% for Kane, and in Tékane (the birthplace of Kane) where he placed second with 35.8% of the vote against 38.6% for Ould Ghazouani, 16.1% for Kane and 8.9% for Ould Babacar.

What seems to be the areas populated by the Soninkes are split between the two candidates: Kane won Maghama (52.7% against 21.0% for Biram, 20.8% for Ould Ghazouani and 3.9% for Ould Babacar) while Biram came ahead in Sélibaby with 50.6% of the vote (against 21.6% for Ould Ghazouani, 17.7% for Kane and 9.0% for Ould Babacar).

Biram received his best results nationwide in the area of M’bout, presumably mostly inhabited by Harātīn, notably in the commune itself, where he received 51.6% of the votes against 36.9% for Ould Ghazouani and 4.5% for Ould Boubacar.