Valgrettighetsprofil

Senegal

West Africa · sn

A presidential republic. The President is elected by direct universal suffrage in a two-round majority contest for a five-year term, renewable once consecutively, and the 165-seat National Assembly is elected separately under a parallel system that combines seats won by party block vote in departmental constituencies with seats allocated proportionally from national lists.

Profil sist gjennomgått August 29, 2026

Every Senegalese citizen of either sex aged 18 or over and in possession of their civil and political rights is a voter, under a Constitution that makes suffrage universal, equal and secret. Elections are administered by the Interior Ministry's Direction generale des Elections, monitored by the Commission electorale nationale autonome, tabulated by the Dakar Court of Appeal and finally proclaimed by the Constitutional Council, whose seven judges are all appointed by the President of the Republic, two of them from a list of four names put forward by the President of the National Assembly. Reaching the presidential ballot requires sponsorship signatures from between 0.6 and 0.8 per cent of the electoral register spread over at least seven regions with a minimum of 2,000 per region, or the backing of a set number of elected officials, a filter that reduced 93 filings to 21 validated candidacies in 2024. The register is biometric and permanent but can only be joined during periodic revisions, and recent audits found close to half of 18 to 30 year olds absent from it. The first peaceful transfer of power between parties came in 2000 after four decades of Socialist Party rule; the most recent came in 2024, when the Constitutional Council overrode an executive attempt to postpone the presidential election past the end of the incumbent's mandate.

Hvordan stemmegivning fungerer i dag

Stemmerettsalder: 18 og over
Velgerregistrering: Velgerinitiert
Identifikasjon: Fotolegitimasjon kreves
Obligatorisk stemmegivning: Nei
Poststemmegivning: Ikke tilgjengelig
Tidlig stemmegivning: Ikke tilgjengelig
Nettstemmegivning: Ikke tilgjengelig
Stemmegivning fra utlandet: Tilgjengelig for alle

Article 3 of the Constitution makes every Senegalese of either sex aged 18 or over and enjoying their civil and political rights a voter, with suffrage universal, equal and secret. Registration is active and open only to holders of the biometric ECOWAS identity card, and only during the periodic revisions of the electoral roll; outside those windows the register is static, and changes of detail or removals cannot be made. The voter card is coupled to the identity card, so registering or amending a record forces a reprint. There is no postal, early or online voting; the 338,040 voters registered abroad voted in person at 807 of the 16,440 polling stations, spread across 50 countries. On the eve of the 2024 poll only around 60 per cent of the cards issued by the 2023 revision had reached their holders.

Hvordan stemmeretten endret seg

Hver oppføring dokumenterer en endring i hvem som kunne stemme, eller hvordan — utvidelser, innstramminger og prosedyremessige reformer like mye.

1956Utvidelse
The loi-cadre Defferre abolished the double electoral college in French West Africa and established a single college with universal suffrage from the age of 21, ending the property and literacy qualifications that had restricted African voters.
La Loi-cadre Defferre de 1956
1960Reform
Senegal became independent from France and adopted a parliamentary system with a two-headed executive under President Leopold Sedar Senghor and Prime Minister Mamadou Dia.
Constitutional history of Senegal
1963Reform
After the 1962 crisis between the President and the Prime Minister, the parliamentary system was abolished by constitutional amendment in favour of a presidential system with strengthened executive powers.
Constitutional history of Senegal
1966Innskrenkning
A one-party state was established, leaving voters no choice of party at national elections.
Constitutional history of Senegal
1976Utvidelse
A constitutional amendment reinstituted multi-party competition, but limited it to three legally recognised parties each assigned a predefined ideology, so that a party could be dissolved for holding the wrong doctrine.
The Constitution of the Republic of Senegal: Introductory Notes
1981Utvidelse
Abdou Diouf, who had taken over from Senghor, instituted unrestricted multipartyism, removing the cap on the number of parties that could contest elections.
The Constitution of the Republic of Senegal: Introductory Notes
2010Utvidelse
Law 2010-11 of 28 May 2010 imposed absolute gender parity on candidate lists for wholly or partly elective bodies, requiring lists to alternate men and women on pain of rejection; women's share of the National Assembly rose from 22 per cent to 43.3 per cent at the first election held under it.
Gender Quotas and Representation - Senegal
2016Reform
A referendum on 20 March 2016 carried a package of fifteen constitutional changes, cutting the presidential term from seven years back to five and creating National Assembly seats for citizens resident abroad; the Constitutional Council had ruled that the shorter term could not apply to the sitting President's own mandate.
Constitutional referendum in Senegal - Shorter presidential term: a half-kept promise
2023Reform
The constitutional amendments of July 2023 lowered the citizen sponsorship threshold for presidential candidacies from 0.8-1 per cent to between 0.6 and 0.8 per cent of the electoral register, or 44,231 to 58,975 sponsors, and introduced sponsorship by elected officials as an alternative route to the ballot, an option four candidates used successfully in 2024.
EU Election Observation Mission, Republic of Senegal, presidential election 24 March 2024: Final Report
2024Reform
The Constitutional Council annulled the decree revoking the convocation of the electorate and struck down the law postponing the presidential election to 15 December 2024, holding the five-year presidential mandate constitutionally intangible; when no new date followed, it convened the electorate itself and the poll was held on 24 March.
Decision no. 1/C/2024 of 15 February 2024

Sikringsmekanismer ved opptellingen

Stemmeseddeltype: Papirstemmesedler
Ettervalgskontroll: Kun rettslig prøving
Valgadministrasjon: Blandet / desentralisert
Innenlandske observatører: Ja
Internasjonale observatører: Ja

Administration is split four ways: the Interior Ministry's Direction generale des Elections runs the operations, the Commission electorale nationale autonome supervises every phase and can order corrections, the Dakar Court of Appeal organises the count and announces provisional results, and the Constitutional Council validates candidacies, acts as supreme electoral judge and proclaims the final result. All seven judges of the Council and all twelve members of the CENA are appointed by the President of the Republic, two of the seven from a list of four names proposed by the President of the National Assembly. The strongest practical check is at the polling station: the results sheet is posted outside and a copy given to every candidate's agent, which in 2024 let the main campaigns aggregate most of the national result independently. Above that level transparency is thin. Provisional and final results have not been published polling station by polling station despite a legal obligation to do so, and departmental tabulation commissions projected their data entry on screen in only 2 of the 32 commissions EU observers visited in 2024. Domestic observation is well established, led by the COSCE collective of civil society organisations, and international missions are routinely accredited: 2,462 observers from 65 international and 10 national missions were accredited in 2024.

Verdt å vite

The register for the 2024 presidential election held 7,371,890 voters, of whom 338,040 were abroad, and the vote was run at 16,440 polling stations, 807 of them in 50 foreign countries.EU Election Observation Mission, Republic of Senegal, 2024 presidential election: Preliminary Statement
Audits of the electoral roll have found roughly a quarter of the adult population and close to half of 18 to 30 year olds unregistered, and the Nekkal civil-registry project found some three million Senegalese hold no civil status document at all, which is a precondition for registering to vote.EU Election Observation Mission, Republic of Senegal, presidential election 24 March 2024: Final Report
Reaching the presidential ballot in 2024 required between 44,231 and 58,975 sponsorship signatures collected in at least seven regions, plus a deposit of 30 million CFA francs; 269 people collected sponsorship forms, 93 filed a candidacy and 21 passed the check, leaving 19 candidates on the ballot after one rejection and one withdrawal, the largest field ever validated for a Senegalese presidential election.EU Election Observation Mission, Republic of Senegal, 2024 presidential election: Preliminary Statement
The Constitutional Council both decides who may stand for president and proclaims the final result, yet it published none of its key 2024 election decisions on its own website before the process ended, the validated candidate list, the ruling annulling the postponement, the fixing of a new polling day and the final results among them; the copies that circulated came from the electoral administration, case-law databases and social media.EU Election Observation Mission, Republic of Senegal, presidential election 24 March 2024: Final Report
The 2010 parity law has not reached the presidency: of 19 candidates in 2024 only one woman remained in the race to polling day, and women presided over 18.5 per cent of the polling stations EU observers visited, while making up 43.1 per cent of assessors and 44.1 per cent of secretaries.EU Election Observation Mission, Republic of Senegal, 2024 presidential election: Preliminary Statement