Legislative and municipal elections 2026: CENA announces the major trends this Wednesday

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These initial trends will help position the parties in the race, notably the Union Progressiste Le Renouveau, the Bloc Républicain, Force cauris pour un Bénin Émergent, Moele-Bénin and Les Démocrates, with regard to their eligibility to share seats in Parliament.

The allocation of seats this year rests on two distinct mechanisms, depending on the mode of participation of the parties.
For formations engaged in a pre-election coalition, the determining criterion is the national threshold of 10% of valid votes. This threshold applies only to parties that concluded a coalition agreement before the election. It is only to these parties that the 10% national bar will be required to be admitted to the sharing of seats.

By contrast, parties that contested without an alliance are subject to a different rule, much more demanding. In accordance with the new Article 146 of the Electoral Code, only lists that have obtained at least 20% of the votes in each electoral district may claim seats.

It is therefore not a national threshold, but a requirement to be met in each constituency. It is within this framework that the Les Démocrates party, running outside a coalition.
In other words, a non-coalition party that fails to reach 20% in a single constituency is excluded from the sharing of seats, even if it achieves good scores elsewhere.

Conversely, in the case of a coalition, a party may be eligible if, where it is weak, its partner reaches 20%, provided that the same party has obtained at least 10% of the votes at the national level.

Beyond these thresholds, the electoral quotient will come into play in the actual distribution of seats among the eligible lists. The CENA is expected to communicate these major trends during the day or overnight from Wednesday to Thursday. The Constitutional Court will then proceed with the official proclamation of the results, no later than Thursday, January 15, 2026.