Turnout: 36.74%
About this election
Benin held elections for the 109-seat National Assembly on 11 January 2026. The two pro-government parties swept every seat: the Progressive Union for Renewal (UP-R) won 60 seats on about 41% of the vote, and the Republican Bloc (BR) took 49 on about 37%. The main opposition party, The Democrats (LD), won roughly 16% of the vote but not a single seat. Turnout was just 36.73%. The result, in which the opposition was again locked out of parliament, reflected electoral rules widely seen as designed to entrench the ruling camp.
Once a model of West African democracy, Benin has under President Patrice Talon moved to a tightly controlled system. Reforms to the party and electoral laws from 2019 onward dramatically reduced the number of qualifying parties and raised the bar for winning seats, with the result that opposition forces have been repeatedly shut out of the legislature even when they command significant popular support. The January 2026 vote came a little over a month after a failed military coup attempt in December 2025.
The National Assembly is elected by proportional representation from 24 multi-member constituencies. The decisive feature is a dual threshold: to win any seats, a party must clear a defined share of the vote not only nationally but in every one of the 24 constituencies simultaneously. This requirement is extremely difficult for an opposition with regionally concentrated support to meet, and it is the main reason a party can win a sixth of the national vote yet receive no seats at all.
The 2026 result was a textbook illustration of how the threshold operates. The Democrats finished third nationally with around 16% of the vote — a substantial bloc of support — but failed to clear the bar in every constituency, and so were allocated zero seats. The two pro-Talon parties, by contrast, divided all 109 seats between them, producing a parliament with no opposition representation.
The UP-R and the Republican Bloc are the two parties aligned with President Talon, between them controlling the entire chamber. The Democrats, associated with figures from Benin's earlier democratic era, are the principal opposition force; despite real popular backing they have been kept out of parliament by the electoral rules. Smaller parties made no headway.
Turnout of 36.73% was strikingly low and is itself a commentary on the contest. With the outcome effectively predetermined by the rules and the opposition largely excluded, many voters stayed home, and the legitimacy conferred by such limited participation is correspondingly weak.
The election was held in a tense atmosphere following a failed coup attempt on 7 December 2025, roughly a month before polling. The episode underscored the strains beneath Benin's managed political surface, even as the vote itself proceeded to deliver another opposition-free Assembly.
Like the presidential election held three months later, the parliamentary vote highlighted Benin's transformation from a competitive democracy into a system dominated by the ruling camp. The combination of restrictive party laws and the dual electoral threshold has effectively removed the opposition from national institutions, a trajectory that has drawn sustained international criticism.
The election took place as Benin faced growing insecurity in its northern regions, where armed groups linked to the wider Sahelian insurgency have carried out deadly attacks. The deteriorating security environment has become a central governance challenge, and the ruling camp has presented its dominance as a guarantor of stability — an argument that critics say is used to justify the narrowing of political competition.
The January parliamentary vote and the April presidential election together formed a single, tightly managed electoral cycle. With the opposition shut out of the Assembly and marginalised in the presidential race, the two contests reinforced one another, consolidating the ruling parties' control of both the legislature and the presidency for the term ahead.
Autonomous National Electoral Commission of Benin (CENA).
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.