Nearly six years after a contested presidential election was overturned, Malawians will head to the polls to elect their Parliament and President. These will be the first elections since the country’s Constitutional Court ordered a rerun after the regular presidential election in 2019. The result of that rerun was the election of Lazarus Chakwera (MCP, conservative) over his main opponent, Peter Mutharika (DPP, centre), the latter of whom had previously won in the annulled election.
The Road to Democracy
A former British colony, Malawi was originally part of a colonial federation known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland from 1953 to 1963. When the federation dissolved, Malawi formally gained its independence. Upon independence, its first prime minister — Hastings Kamuzu Banda (MCP, conservative) — soon reorganized Malawi’s system of government into a presidential republic. Throughout the rest of the 1960s, Banda would consolidate his hold over the country by establishing a one-party state in 1966. In 1971, Banda’s Malawi Congress Party declared him “President for Life.”
Decades later, in March 1992, a letter was written by some of the country’s most prominent Catholic Bishops expressing their concerns about the state of human rights and poverty in the country. This letter served to galvanize Malawi’s domestic opposition as well as the international community when Banda, having read the tea leaves, announced a referendum that saw the introduction of multi-party democracy. In 1993, the referendum on multiparty democracy resulted in almost ⅔ of the total vote cast in favor of democracy.
Democratic consolidation
Despite being the third-poorest country in sub-Saharan Africa by GDP per capita, Malawi has managed to score a V-Dem index rating of 0.58/1 in 2025, categorizing it as an “electoral democracy” according to that index. Malawi’s democracy is unusual in that, despite being one of the world’s poorest countries, it has managed to sustain democratic government since multiparty elections were first held in 1994. The reason is that Malawi has many of the elements of a successful democracy with a strong civil society, respected political institutions (such as the Constitutional Court), and widespread support across Malawian society for its democratic form of government.
Malawi’s status as a democracy got a boost on February 3, 2020, when the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election due to evidence of widespread voting irregularities. The parliamentary election results were allowed to stand, however. The Court also ruled that the president must be elected by a two-round system as mandated by the constitution; previous elections were frequently won by candidates without a majority of the vote. Lazarus Chakwera’s win in 2020 over Peter Mutharika in a free and fair election served to bolster the institution of the Constitutional Court and the conditions surrounding the rule of law more widely.
The Presidential Election
As of the time of this writing, three recent or current presidents have officially announced their bids for the presidency in the 2025 elections. Lazarus Chakwera, the incumbent, is facing ex-President Peter Mutharika and former President Joyce Banda (PP, centre-right). Like in most presidential systems, the President and Vice President appear on the ballot as one unified ticket.
Chakwera’s background as a theologian, combined with his humble persona, won him a sizable support base among evangelical leaders in a country where around 80% of the population identifies as Christian. During the most recent election season, his campaign promised to bring the country together, fight poverty and corruption, and uphold the rule of law.
In the years since, Chakwera’s promises have not delivered the results many Malawians have hoped for. Almost two-thirds of the country, according to a 2022 Afrobarometer poll, now believe that corruption has worsened in the country under Chakwera’s leadership. Successive Afrobarometer polls since 2020 have highlighted this trend, with a nearly 17-point gap between the DPP and the MCP according to respondents expressing a preference for a political party in the country’s Round 10 Afrobarometer summary of results. The MCP’s coalition partner, the UTM (liberal), which also holds the office of the Vice-President, has also seen a drop in support, according to this same Afrobarometer data.
In contrast, Peter Mutharika is a former jurist, having specialized in international law at Yale University, where he earned his doctorate. He is the younger brother of the late former president Bingu wa Mutharika, who served as Malawi’s president from 2004 until his death in 2012. If elected, Mutharika would be the first president of Malawi to serve two non-consecutive terms. Most of Muhtarika’s policies as president in his first term were aimed at addressing the country’s low level of economic development with mixed results: the pace of reforms was slow, and corruption was still endemic even as economic growth began to pick up again between 2016 and 2020.
Finally, there is Joyce Banda. Originally, the Vice President under Bingu wa Mutharika, when the elder Mutharika died, Banda became president. In the 2014 election, she lost the office to Peter Mutharika, coming in third place behind both Mutharika and Chakwera, who also ran at the time, where she secured 20.2% of the vote.
Geographic spread
Malawi is divided into three distinct regions and 28 districts. Historically, the DPP’s stronghold has been in the districts of Malawi’s Southern Region. Meanwhile, the more conservative MCP has traditionally performed best in the country’s Central Region, where the capital Lilongwe is located. The more rural, northern districts have often been won by the PP and the UTM, respectively, in the two most recent elections. It is worth mentioning that the PP and the UTM both have fielded vice-presidential candidates alongside the presidential candidates of the two largest parties.
Runoff potential?
There have been only two elections for president since Malawi adopted multi-party elections, in which the elected president won with a majority of the vote on election day. Consequently, the likelihood of a runoff needing to be held this time around is high. Moreover, both the PP and the UTM are running in this election. Having won significant shares of the vote in the last elections they contested, in combination with the entry of the smaller UDF (liberal) into the race, the likelihood of a first-round election result triggering a runoff is higher than it has been in recent years.
Parliamentary Elections
Unlike the presidential poll, the Malawian parliamentary election will continue to be held under the first-past-the-post system. This system has allowed for a large number of independents to win seats in the parliament. 55 out of 193 seats belong to independents, the same number that belong to the MCP in the parliament. No single political party has won an outright majority of the seats in parliament since the 2009 general election.
Conclusion
Regarding the presidential race, the odds that no candidate receives an outright majority on election day are substantial. With the parliamentary elections, independents are still expected to win a significant number of seats. The effect of having candidates from the five largest political parties could eat away at the share of voters electing political independents, as partisan candidates for parliament might “ride the coattails” of the top ticket. Nevertheless, the “hung parliament” that currently exists is expected to persist through the election, and independents could still hold the balance of power, such as in electing the Speaker of the National Assembly, which they did in 2019 with the election of Catherine Gotani Hara (MCP). The 2019 legislative election returned a parliament where the share of the seats won required an MCP majority to have either DPP support or at least some independents in electing the National Assembly’s speaker.
National Assembly Composition
Successful elections in September would go a long way in shoring up faith in Malawi’s democratic institutions. Despite challenges, the election would serve as an example to other countries in the region of the potential for democratic development in one of Africa’s poorest regions.