Voter turnout may matter more than electoral rules in Kazakhstan’s 2026 election - Dr. Riccardo Pelizzo

In an exclusive interview with a Qazinform correspondent, Dr. Riccardo Pelizzo, Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Public Policy at Nazarbayev University, assessed what the reforms mean for political competition, how the consolidation of the ruling party has reshaped the field, and why he expects turnout to matter more than the rules.

The electoral threshold has been lowered from 7% to 5%, while single-mandate constituencies have been abolished at the national level. Some analysts have argued that these two changes push in opposite directions on pluralism. Which effect do you expect to dominate in this cycle?

I am not sure that it is entirely correct to claim, as you suggest in your question, that lowering the electoral threshold from 7% to 5% and abolishing the single member districts may have opposite effects on pluralism.

The reduction of the electoral threshold for sure makes it easier for smaller parties to win seats and be represented in the Qurultay. The abolition of the single member districts may also be beneficial for the smaller parties. In Single Member Districts only the largest party or the candidate with more votes wins the seat. All the other parties win nothing. So eliminating Single Member Districts you create the conditions for smaller parties to win more rather than fewer seats.

The results of the 2023 elections can be used to illustrate my point. In 2023 Amanat won 40 of the 69 seats that were distributed with party list. This is slightly less than 58%, but it won 22 of the 29 or almost 76% of the seats in the single member districts. Conversely the other parties won only 24% of the seats awarded with Single Member Districts but won 42% of the seats awarded with party list. This makes it quite clear that the abolition of the Single Member Districts benefits smaller parties just like the reduction of the electoral threshold. So in my view both measures will push in the same direction on pluralism.

In June, Amanat merged into the newly registered Adilet party ahead of the first elections under the new Constitution. How would you characterize what this consolidation represents for the structure of the party system?

This is an interesting and somewhat unexpected development. I think that the consolidation of these two parties represents an effort to consolidate the party system. The fragmentation of the parliamentary party system increased in each of the previous elections.

In the wake of the 2023 elections the parliamentary party system was still dominated by a party that was considerably stronger than any of the other parties. But it won just a little more than 50% of the vote, 53.9% in the party list, and did not manage to win a two-thirds majority. The merger is an effort to appeal to some of the voters who did not support it in 2023 and to win more votes than it did then. It is difficult to govern if the parliamentary majority is small and not terribly disciplined.

I think that the electoral reform was designed to ensure that members of the Qurultay will be more disciplined and the merger was designed to win a larger number of seats.

Seven parties are contesting the vote. In your view, what would a seat distribution have to look like for this election to count as evidence that the new model broadened political competition?

The 2023 elections were the most competitive elections in many years. Amanat won 53.9% of the vote in the PR quota and, overall, 62 seats out of 98, which meant that it did not manage to win a two-thirds supermajority.

Its performance in the 2023 elections was influenced by three fundamental factors: first, it was the first elections in which the party took part; second, there were new parties that were able to do surprisingly well like Respublika and third, there was a fairly low rate of electoral participation or a low electoral turnout. The single most important of these three factors in shaping the outcome of the election was turnout. Only 54.2% of the voters took part in the elections and many and possibly most of these voters were its voters. We know that when turnout is higher the electoral performance of the winning party is stronger. 

The reason is that when Kazakhstan’s largest party makes a concerted effort to mobilize its electorate, its voters go to vote, turnout is higher and the winning party wins more votes. This conclusion is correct for both national or parliamentary elections and for local elections.

I make this long preamble about the 2023 elections to say that the distribution of seats depends not only on the electoral system or the number of parties competing in the elections but also, and in my opinion more importantly, on the rate of electoral participation.

The surveys conducted so far in the month of July suggest that the support for Adilet is increasing and was above 65% of those surveyed, Auyl was close to 6%, while the other parties were all below the 5% threshold with 8.4% of the voters still undecided. My guess is that in the end Ak Zhol and Respublika will be able to win enough votes to win some seats in the Qurultay while it would be harder for the National Social Democratic Party and for the People’s Party of Kazakhstan to do so.

While I expect the 2026 elections to be as competitive as the 2023 elections, seven parties took part in the 2023 elections and seven parties will participate in the 2026 elections, I do not think that competition will be broadened. The survey data so far suggest that Adilet will win more votes than Amanat did in 2023.

Dr. Riccardo Pelizzo is an internationally recognized political development specialist. His research focuses on issues of political development, institutional reform and institutional performance in developing countries. After designing measures and benchmarks for assessing parliaments’ capacity and performance, he is currently devising several diagnostic tools to measure political stability and other dimensions of good governance.

Earlier, Qazinform reported that Jibek Joly TV Channel hosted live pre-election debates featuring representatives of all seven political parties contesting Kazakhstan’s first elections to the Qurultay.