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March 29, 2019 | English | Sami Atallah and Sami Zoughaib
A Snapshot of Parliamentary Election Results

On 6 May 2018, nearly half of the Lebanese voting population cast their ballots to elect a new parliament for the first time in nearly a decade. The highly anticipated election was governed by a new proportional representation law intended to steer the country away from its traditional majoritarian system. Of the 597 candidates, 128 winners from Lebanon’s 15 electoral districts claimed parliamentary seats.
 
Contrary to expectations, the implementation of a proportional electoral system did not result in high voter turnout. Of 3.7 million eligible voters, including about 83,000 expatriates, 49.7% cast their ballots—a modest turnout and a nearly 4% decrease from the election of 2009 (53.4%). Most districts saw turnout hover around the 50% mark, with the exception of Mount Lebanon 1 and Bekaa 3 with 66% and 60% respectively, while Beirut 1 had the lowest turnout with 33%.
 
This report focuses on the election results and their implications on the distribution of power across the parliament. We show that political blocs have changed significantly in size and why this shift should be understood in context, namely, that political parties are reliant on non-party members to form blocs and the parliament remains dominated by six major parties. We demonstrate that most major political parties sought to compete nationally, as each won seats in seven districts on average. Despite expectations that the newly adopted proportional representation system would bring new faces into the parliament, newly emerged groups performed rather poorly in the election. Women’s representation in the parliament improved only marginally, and those who did perform well are politically connected. Additionally, we highlight political changes in specific voting districts that resulted from the most recent national election.
 
The report comprises three sections: The first section focuses on the distribution of power in the new parliament by outlining the characteristics of newly formed blocs and presenting information on new MPs. The second section examines the performance of each of the seven major political parties across all electoral districts. The third section analyzes results at the district level.