Kenyan Elections
AS OF 2026-09-08 · 33 CONTESTS · general election, 9 August 2022 · WIKIPEDIA, NATIONAL ELECTORAL AUTHORITIES
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Kenya's elections from the racially restricted colonial Legislative Council of 1920 to the 2022 general election: the 1963 transfer of power, a one-party state formalised in 1982, the return of multi-party competition in 1992, the disputed 2007 count and the violence that followed it, and the 2010 constitution's devolved, six-office general elections, including the 2017 presidential result the Supreme Court annulled and re-ran.
Source: Wikipedia election articles · as of 2026-09-08
National Assembly seats
349
290 constituency, 47 women, 12 nominated
Elections since 1920
33
Aug 2022
50.5%
Ruto's first-round win over Odinga
Presidential elections
Every Kenyan presidential contest on file since 1978, newest first. The one-party years carry no vote at all; October 2017 is the re-run ordered after the Supreme Court annulled the August result.
The 2010 constitution · 2013-
The 2010 constitution requires an outright majority plus 25% of the vote in at least 24 of Kenya's 47 counties, with a runoff otherwise; no election since has gone to one. Uhuru Kenyatta beat Raila Odinga in 2013 and again in August 2017, when the Supreme Court annulled the result over irregularities in the transmission of results, an unprecedented step for an African presidential election. Odinga withdrew from the October re-run, and William Ruto beat Odinga in 2022 by 1.6 points.
The 2007 crisis · 2007
Kibaki's re-election over Raila Odinga was announced by a divided electoral commission chairman who later said he did not know who had actually won; European Union and United States observers both raised concerns about the count. Odinga rejected the result, and the weeks that followed were the most violent in Kenya's post-independence history. Kofi Annan mediated a power-sharing deal that made Kibaki president and Odinga prime minister rather than settling the count itself.
Moi, Kibaki and a fractured opposition · 1992-2002
Direct multi-party presidential elections began in 1992. Moi won both 1992 and 1997 with well under half the vote against an opposition split among several candidates; Mwai Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition finally unified that opposition in 2002 and won by a landslide, ending 24 years of KANU presidents.
The unopposed presidency · 1978-1988
Under the one-party constitution the president was elected unopposed at every general election from 1969 to 1988: KANU nominated one candidate, no other party could contest, and no vote was held. Jomo Kenyatta held the office until his death in 1978; Daniel arap Moi succeeded him and was returned the same way in 1979 and 1983. These rows carry a date and a name and no figures, because none exist to record.
National Assembly elections
Every National Assembly election since the colonial Legislative Council of 1920, newest first. The colonial elections and the one-party era before 1992 carry a caveat in the article's own terms.
The 2010 constitution · 2013-
The 2013 constitution created the Senate alongside an enlarged National Assembly and devolved counties, so general elections since have elected six offices at once: president, senators, MPs, governors, county women representatives and county assembly members. Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee coalition, then William Ruto's Kenya Kwanza, have each organised the National Assembly since, and coalitions rather than single parties now carry most of the chamber.
Multi-party Kenya · 1992-2007
Section 2A was repealed in 1991 under pressure from a pro-democracy movement and foreign donors, and KANU held on through a fractured opposition in 1992 and 1997 before Mwai Kibaki's National Rainbow Coalition ended its 39-year rule in 2002. The 2007 election, contested on a genuinely open field, was followed by a disputed presidential count and the worst post-election violence in Kenya's history; the parliamentary result that year is not itself in dispute in the source, only the presidential one.
The one-party state · 1969-1988
The Kenya People's Union was banned in October 1969, leaving KANU the only party on the ballot, and Section 2A of the constitution made that arrangement law in 1982. Within it the seat contests were often real: hundreds of KANU candidates stood for nomination at every election, and dozens of sitting MPs, including ministers, lost their seats each time.
The transfer of power · 1961-1963
The last two colonial elections were genuine multi-party contests fought under a widened, largely non-racial franchise: Jomo Kenyatta's KANU against Ronald Ngala's KADU in 1961, then again in the May 1963 election that carried Kenya to independence in December. KANU has never lost a National Assembly election since.
The Legislative Council · 1920-1957
Kenya's Legislative Council was filled by a race-based franchise: eleven European seats were elected outright, with a handful of Indian and Arab seats decided on separate rolls, and the majority Black population had no vote at all, only a few members nominated by the Governor. That changed only at the margins in 1956-57, when eight constituencies elected an African member for the first time. None of these elections were contested on party lines that a results table records, so they appear here as dated, uncontested rows rather than tables of names.
The long arc in charts
Hover any point for the exact figure.
Turnout
Above 80% at every direct multi-party presidential election except the boycotted October 2017 re-run, which fell to 39%.
The largest party or coalition's National Assembly seat share
KANU held the chamber outright through the one-party era; since 2013 the largest bloc has generally needed a coalition partner to govern.
Records & superlatives
Highest presidential turnout
85.9%
2013, of the elections with a recorded figure
Lowest presidential turnout
39.0%
October 2017
Largest presidential win
98.3%
Uhuru Kenyatta, October 2017
Narrowest presidential win
36.4%
Daniel arap Moi, 1992
Highest turnout
85.9%
2013, of the elections with a recorded figure
Lowest turnout
40.7%
1988
Highest vote share
100.0%
Kenya African National Union, 1969
Most seats won
188
Kenya African National Union, 1988
Largest National Assembly majority
158 of 158 elected
Every elected seat was contested by KANU alone; no other party was on the ballot.
Lowest presidential turnout
39.03%
Raila Odinga withdrew and urged a boycott after the annulled August vote.
Closest presidential result
1.6 points
William Ruto's 50.49% against Raila Odinga's 48.85%.
How Kenyan elections work
President elected outright or by runoff
Since the 2010 constitution the president needs an absolute majority plus 25% of the vote in at least 24 of Kenya's 47 counties, or a runoff between the top two follows. No election has gone to one; the closest, 2022, was decided by 1.6 points in the first round.
An Assembly elected three ways
290 members are elected by first-past-the-post in single-member constituencies. A further 47 seats, one per county, are reserved for women, and 12 more are nominated by parties in proportion to their strength, for 349 seats in total.
The one-party interlude
KANU was Kenya's only legal party from 1982 to 1991, and the sole party on the ballot from 1969. The presidency went unopposed at every election in that period; the National Assembly did not, since KANU's own primaries were genuinely contested and turned over many sitting MPs.
2007 and 2017, twice disputed
Kenya's presidential count has been challenged twice: in 2007, when a disputed Kibaki win was resolved by a power-sharing deal after nationwide violence, and in 2017, when the Supreme Court annulled Kenyatta's re-election outright and ordered a re-run that Odinga then boycotted.