 Morocco’s southern provinces recorded high voter turnout in Wednesday’s legislative elections, with several of them posting participation rates exceeding 70% at the close of voting.
Voter turnout reached 77% in the Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra region, 61% in Dakhla-Oued Eddahab and 53.48% in Guelmim-Oued Noun.
These turnout levels confirm a trend observed in previous elections, which were marked by strong voter participation in the same provinces.
For Moulay Boubkir Hamdani, president of the Strategic Reflection and Defense of Democracy Center in Laayoune, the high turnout recorded in the southern provinces was "one of the highlights" of these legislative elections.
In a statement to MAP, Hamdani stressed that the high turnout primarily reflects sustained interest among voters in the Kingdom’s southern provinces in exercising their right to vote and, more broadly, in participating in public life.
It also reflects, he said, the importance they attach to the electoral process as a means of choosing members of the House of Representatives.
The high participation of voters in the southern provinces is not a new phenomenon. In the 2016 legislative elections, turnout reached 57.21% in the Laayoune constituency. In 2021, it stood at 66.94% in Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra, 63.76% in Guelmim-Oued Noun and 58.3% in Dakhla-Oued Eddahab.
Although the territorial boundaries are not exactly identical, these figures show the continuity of high voter participation in the southern provinces, Hamdani said.
Several factors may explain this trend, he noted, including the intensity of local competition, the proximity between candidates and voters, the mobilization capacity of political parties, the importance of territorial issues, the renewal of candidacies, and citizens’ perception of the usefulness of their vote.
He also pointed to the conduct of electoral campaigning in the digital sphere, noting that social media had contributed to increasing the circulation of electoral information and interest in the vote, particularly among young people.
The high turnout also has a broader institutional dimension, as it reflects the role of elections as a mechanism through which the populations of the southern provinces contribute to the management of public affairs, Hamdani noted.
"Beyond the turnout rate itself, the key element lies in the continuity of this high participation from one election to another," he concluded, considering it an indicator of the dynamics of local politics and of the role played by voting in engaging citizens in the southern provinces in public life.
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