Parliamentary elections were held in

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

on 9 February 2020, together with

municipal elections In many parts of the world, local elections take place to select office-holders in local government, such as mayors and councillors. Elections to positions within a city or town are often known as "municipal elections". Their form and conduct vary ...

. The Cameroon People's Democratic Movement retained its majority in parliament, winning 139 of the 167 seats decided on election day.

Background

The elections had originally been scheduled for 2018. However, in June 2018 President

Paul Biya Paul Biya (born Paul Barthélemy Biya'a bi Mvondo; 13 February 1933) is a Cameroonian politician who has served as the president of Cameroon since 6 November 1982.

sent a letter to leader of the Senate seeking to delay the elections until October 2019. On 2 July 2019 parliament voted to extend its mandate by twelve months. Ahead of that date the following June, documents leaked on social media purporting to show Biya's negotiations with parliamentary leaders to further delay parliamentary elections to coincide with municipal elections in February 2020. The ongoing

Anglophone Crisis The Anglophone Crisis (), also known as the Ambazonia War or the Cameroonian Civil War, is an ongoing civil war in the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon, part of the long-standing Anglophone problem. Following the suppression of the ...

dominated the process, with supporters of

Ambazonia Ambazonia, officially the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, also referred to as Amba Land, is an unrecognised breakaway state in West Africa which claims the Northwest Region and Southwest Region of Cameroon, though it currently controls almost ...

calling for a boycott of the election. Ensuing violence resulted in a low turnout in the Northwest Region and Southwest Region, with separatists claiming that 98 percent of eligible voters had boycotted the election.Low Turnout Frustrates Election In North West, South West Regions
Cameroon News Agency, Feb 9, 2020. Accessed Feb 11, 2020.

Electoral system

The 180 members of the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

are elected from 58 single- and multi-member constituencies based on the departments. In single-member constituencies,

first-past-the-post voting In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

is used. In multi-member constituencies, a modified form of

closed list Closed list describes the variant of party-list systems where voters can effectively only vote for political parties as a whole; thus they have no influence on the party-supplied order in which party candidates are elected. If voters had some inf ...

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

is used, in which a party receiving over 50% of the vote in a constituency wins all the seats, but if no party receives over 50% of the vote, the party with the most votes is awarded half the seats and any other party receiving over 5% of the vote receives a proportional share of the remaining half of the seats based on the

largest remainder method The largest remainder method (also known as Hare–Niemeyer method, Hamilton method or as Vinton's method) is one way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting systems. It contrasts with variou ...

and

Hare quota The Hare quota (also known as the simple quota) is a formula used under some forms of proportional representation. In these voting systems the quota is the number of votes that guarantees a candidate, or a party in some cases, captures a seat. Th ...

.Cameroon
Election Passport

Results

References

{{Cameroonian elections

Parliamentary election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

Elections in Cameroon Election and referendum articles with incomplete results