Namibia Local and Regional Elections: November 25, 2020


A campaign vehicle for Swapo, Namibia’s biggest political party. Photo credit: Wikimedia/Pgallert (CC BY-SA 3.0)

KEY FACTS
Freedom House Rating

Free
Government Type
Presidential Republic
Population
2.5 million
UPCOMING ELECTIONS
Local and Regional Elections
November 25, 2020
Presidential and Legislative Elections
November 2024 (due)
PAST ELECTIONS
Presidential and Legislative Elections
November 27, 2019
Local and Regional Elections
November 27, 2015

Namibia is due to hold local and regional elections on November 25, 2020. Voters will elect various local and regional government officials. The election commission has said that the polls will go forward on schedule despite COVID-19.

Political Context

Namibia is a free, stable democracy. In that vein, recent elections have been judged free, fair, and credible by observers.Since independence from South Africa in 1990, Namibian politics have been dominated by the socialist Swapo, an independence movement-turned-political party. However, Swapo’s vote share decreased significantly in the November 2019 elections. President Hage Geingob won re-election, but with 56 percent of the vote, down from 87 percent when he was originally elected in 2014. Independent opposition candidate Panduleni Itula won nearly 30 percent of the vote. Similarly, Swapo also lost its supermajority in the legislature (but does remain the majority party).

The biggest opposition group is the center-right Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), an alliance of several political parties, which won 16 of the 104 seats in the National Assembly in 2019, its best-ever result. 

Curated News and Analysis

Sakeus Iikela, The Namibian (June 22, 2020): Namibia: November Polls to Go Ahead Amid COVID-19

The Guardian (November 30, 2019): Namibia election: president wins second term despite scandal and recession

AP (November 27, 2019): Namibia Votes as Ruling Party Faces Unprecedented Challenge

Henning Melber, The Conversation (November 25, 2019): Namibian elections: the sands are shifting – slowly

Updated June 24, 2020

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