đź”´ Morocco election 2026 live tracker: Istiqlal plays both sides, PAM plays all three, PJD already picked one

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Hello and welcome to English’s live coverage as Morocco elects its government .

15:00 | The parties start saying what the result means

The first reactions have started narrowing the field without yet producing a coalition map. PAM has left every door open, avoiding red lines and stopping short of condemning the outgoing government outright, a position that keeps room to govern again with RNI or Istiqlal despite the campaign’s attacks.
PJD’s Benkirane has already signaled the party will sit outside a PAM-led government, back in opposition. Istiqlal has stayed deliberately non-committal, keeping both government and opposition on the table, while RNI through a post on Facebook by outgoing head of government Aziz Akhannouch defending its five-year record rather than saying what role it wants now that it’s lost first place.
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03:43 | Interior Ministry announces preliminary election results, what follows is the list of seats per party: 

03:27 | PAM swoops legislative election, announces Interior Ministry 

Morocco’s Interior Ministry announced the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM) as the grand winner of tonight’s electoral race with 97 seats.

01:54 | Interior pushes results briefing later as parties start celebrating anyway

The Interior Ministry’s national results briefing, expected earlier in the night, is now due around 2:30 to 3 a.m. That leaves the official national seat picture still missing, even as party headquarters in Rabat are starting to behave as though the night has already broken their way.

Supporters at both PAM and PJD headquarters are celebrating preliminary results. RNI is sounding more restrained, but party president Mohamed Chouki said he was “reassured and satisfied” with the early numbers and that they pointed to a large number of RNI candidates winning across different constituencies.

The early morning briefing should finally tell us whether the mood inside those headquarters matches the numbers outside them.

0:20 | Interior is due at 1 a.m. For now, the election is still arriving in pieces

The Interior Ministry is due to speak around 1 a.m. Until then, the national picture is still being built constituency by constituency, from prefecture results, partial counts and party tallies that are moving at different speeds.

22:50 | The claims are getting national. The count still isn’t.

PJD says it is leading across a string of cities. RNI says it expects to finish first. PAM says its early results look “very positive.” The rhetoric has gone national faster than the count has.

What is becoming clearer is the local picture. PAM has the strongest early showing in Rabat, with provisional results putting it first in both Rabat-Ocean and Rabat-Chellah. In Ocean, Mehdi Bensaid had 7,386 votes, ahead of PJD on 5,868, with 68% counted in the tally shared with us.

Taroudant is a good warning against reading too much into the first numbers. An earlier count from Houara had PJD comfortably ahead there. A later tally had Istiqlal’s Abdessamad Kayouh leading Taroudant Al Janoubia overall.

So for now the useful conclusion is fairly modest: PAM is showing early strength in Rabat, Istiqlal is competitive in Taroudant, and the parties are already selling national momentum. 

21:51 | Turnout 38.02%

The interior ministry has now confirmed voting closed nationwide at 7 pm, with turnout finishing at 38.02%,  a hard number to build the analysis around, and one worth returning to.
The ministry said voting went smoothly across the country, with only a handful of isolated, limited exceptions, and that counting started immediately at polling stations in what it described as a positive atmosphere, with party and list representatives present to observe.
As the count moves through its first stage, several parties are already circulating their own internal tallies, with officials from a number of the major lists telling supporters and local media they’re seeing strong numbers in their strongholds. These early claims are based on party observers’ own counts at individual polling stations, not on any official tabulation, the interior ministry’s central offices and the judge-led counting commissions haven’t yet compiled or confirmed constituency results

20:10 | Voting is over. Now comes the messy part.

Polls have closed across Morocco after 11 hours of voting, and the last national turnout figure we have is 28.05% at 5 p.m. The Interior Ministry has not yet given a final number. From here, there is no single result waiting to drop.

Each polling station counts its own ballots first and produces a procès-verbal, or PV. Those numbers then begin moving upward through the official count. At the same time, parties are running their own parallel operation, collecting PVs from representatives around the country and adding them up at headquarters. We are about to get a lot of numbers that look comparable and often are not.

17:00 | National turnout reaches 28.05% as PAM responds to Tangier claims

  • Voters continued to cast their ballots under normal conditions at polling stations across Morocco on Wednesday, with a national voter turnout reaching 28.05% as of 5 p.m., reports Morocco’s Interior Ministry.

  • PAM responded to the Tangier controversy in an official statement, calling the allegations “a campaign targeting the party.”

15:00 | Turnout reaches 21% nationwide as Tangier ballot-box case draws judicial scrutiny

  • The Interior Ministry said national turnout reached 21% by 3 p.m., up from 11.34% at noon and 4.23% at 10 a.m. Voting was continuing under normal conditions nationwide, according to reports from prefectures, provinces and prefectural districts. That means turnout rose by 9.66 percentage points between noon and 3 p.m., a faster three-hour increase than the morning pace.
  • Tangier case:Police detained a person inside a polling station at Al Quds School in the Casabarata district on suspicion of possessing illegal ballot papers, sources told .

12:00| Turnout climbs to 11.34% at noon, Interior Ministry says

      • The Interior Ministry has issued its second communiquĂ© of the day, saying voting is continuing under normal conditions nationwide, based on information received from prefectures, provinces and prefectural districts across the country.
      • National turnout stood at 11.34% as of noon.  up from the 4.23% recorded at 10 a.m., meaning roughly 7.1 percentage points were added in the two hours in between. Still early to draw conclusions, but this gives the first real sense of pace.

11:16 | Voting under way: Interior Ministry confirms normal start as first turnout figure lands, early scenes emerge, and one flashpoint is defused

      • Interior Ministry communiquĂ©: Voting opened as scheduled at 8 a.m. across all polling stations nationwide “under normal conditions,” with candidate-list representatives present for both local and regional constituencies. First national turnout figure: 4.23% as of 10 a.m,  too early to read as a trend, but worth tracking against later readings and against 2021’s pace at the same hour.
      • First party figures voting: PAM coordinator Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri voted in Marrakech, calling for strong turnout, a message likely to be echoed by other party figures through the day, given how central turnout has become to this vote’s credibility after 2021’s roughly 50% showing. Leaders due to vote in Rabat before midday: Istiqlal’s Nizar Baraka (10:30), PPS leader Nabil Benabdallah (11:00), RNI president Mohamed Chaouki (11:30), PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane (noon), a tight two-hour window that functions, in part, as a coordinated turnout appeal.
      • Scenes from around the country: Images coming in from Marrakech, Tangier, Errachidia, Casablanca, Oujda and elsewhere. African Union observers were visible inside polling stations in Rabat, underlining the international scrutiny on this vote, while reporters are covering voting from Laayoune and other regional centres.
      • El Jadida hit-and-run clarified: Prosecutors said preliminary findings show no link between a viral hit-and-run video and any electoral dispute, after social media posts had claimed a driver deliberately targeted a candidate. The speed of the clarification, before midday, with voting barely under way, suggests authorities are moving quickly to keep unverified claims from shaping the day’s narrative.

23:54 | Campaign silence begins as polls prepare to open

Morocco votes for a new parliament tomorrow. The campaign closed at midnight Tuesday; we’re now entering the mandatory silence period, and there’s no late polling to go on, so nobody really knows where this stands heading in.

Polls run 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., with 15.8 million registered voters. Turnout will be the first real number to come out, before the actual count begins.

On substance, the final stretch of the campaign has mostly been about the outgoing government’s record, argued from different sides. The RNI is running on its numbers in health, education, employment and social protection. PAM has focused on purchasing power, and that argument has centered on one figure: 280 billion dirhams.

Budget Minister and PAM political bureau member Fouzi Lekjaa cited that figure as the amount mobilized over five years to support purchasing power, while himself raising doubts about how effective it’s actually been. The PJD, PPS and Alliance of the Left have since picked up the same number and turned it into a line of attack against the government. Istiqlal’s pitch has been more about structural change: wages, housing, and cutting the country’s dependence on imported energy, food and medicine.

The post đź”´ Morocco election 2026 live tracker: Istiqlal plays both sides, PAM plays all three, PJD already picked one appeared first on English – Morocco News.

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