Algeria's incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, 78, has been re-elected with almost 95%of the vote, the country's electoral authority ANIE said Sunday, September 8. Tebboune defeated moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani, 57, and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche, 41.
"Of 5,630,000 voters recorded, 5,320,000 voted for the independent candidate Abdelmadjid Tebboune, accounting for 94.65%" of Saturday's vote, ANIE head Mohamed Charfi told reporters in the capital Algiers.
Tebboune's main challenge had been to boost voter participation in Saturday's vote after a historic abstention rate of over 60% in 2019. That year, Tebboune became president amid widely boycotted elections and mass pro-democracy Hirak protests that later died out under his tenure with ramped-up policing and hundreds put in jail.
Both of Tebboune's challengers had called for a large turnout Saturday morning, hoping to end "the boycott" and make the elections "credible" as more than 24 million Algerians are registered to vote.
Early Sunday morning the electoral authority ANIE announced an "average turnout" rate of 48%, calling it "provisional", but it did not give a breakdown of the number of voters against those initially registered. It said it would announce the official turnout rate later during the day.
The announcement came three hours behind schedule after the election board said on Saturday evening that it was extending voting by one hour, expecting more voters to show up. ANIE had also announced an "average" participation of 26% by 5 pm – which would have compared to 33% by that time of day in the 2019 elections.
Hassani's campaign on Sunday said in a statement that ANIE's provisional turnout was "strange" and denounced attempts to "inflate the results." After voting in Algiers Saturday morning, the incumbent president did not mention turnout, saying only that he hoped "Algeria will win in any case".