هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
In an electoral surprise likely to reshuffle part of Morocco’s political landscape, Morocco’s Interior Ministry announced Thursday morning, Sept. 24, results of the latest parliamentary elections, which saw the Authenticity and Modernity Party come first with 97 seats, while the National Rally of Independents came in second with 66 seats, and the Istiqlal Party placed third with 65 seats.
But the biggest surprise was the striking return of the Justice and Development Party to the forefront of the electoral scene, after it came in fourth with 54 seats — a major jump compared with its results in the 2021 elections. It was followed by the Popular Movement with 29 seats, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces with 26, the Party of Progress and Socialism with 19, and the Constitutional Union with 17.
The elections saw 27 parties compete for the 395 seats of the House of Representatives through 1,850 electoral lists that included 7,288 candidates, among them 2,658 women. Nationwide turnout reached 38.02%, according to Morocco’s Interior Ministry.
Beyond the map of winners and losers, the Justice and Development Party’s results have brought back to the fore one of the most prominent questions raised in Morocco in recent years: whether the party’s electoral collapse in 2021, when it fell to just 13 seats, marked the actual end of its role as one of the leading representatives of the Islamist current in Moroccan political life, or was merely a temporary electoral setback that could be overcome.
The jump from 13 to 54 seats in a single electoral cycle — more than quadrupling its representation — forcefully returns the party to the circle of parliamentary competition. But it does not necessarily mean it has regained the position it held at the height of its political rise, especially since it still ranks fourth and remains far from leading the scene. This raises an unavoidable question: Do the 2026 elections mark the beginning of a new phase in the Islamists’ return to the heart of Morocco’s political equation, or is this no more than a protest vote against the government and its parties after they failed to meet the public’s aspirations?
The party map is changing
The preliminary results of the vote revealed notable changes in Morocco’s party landscape, as most major parties saw a marked decline in their number of seats compared with the 2021 elections, while the Islamist Justice and Development Party emerged as one of the biggest surprises of the electoral contest after posting gains of more than 400% compared with the previous cycle.
The Authenticity and Modernity Party topped the election results with 97 seats, up from 87 in the 2021 elections. Meanwhile, the National Rally of Independents fell to second place with 66 seats, after having led the previous contest with 102 seats. As for the Istiqlal Party, which represented the third pillar of the outgoing governing coalition, it came third with 65 seats, compared with 81 in the 2021 legislative elections.
The major leap made by the Justice and Development Party, and its relative recovery of status after rejoining the ranks of the main forces in Morocco’s political scene following the major collapse it suffered in the previous elections, has revived discussion about the reasons behind that return and its implications after five full years spent in the opposition.
A comeback with causes: Reassessing the 2021 experience
The major leap achieved by the Islamists in the number of seats cannot be treated as a passing event or a random electoral development without causes or prelude. Over the past five years, since the start of the previous parliamentary term, party and political life has seen a set of overlapping factors that contributed, to varying degrees, to paving the way for the Justice and Development Party’s return to the forefront after the major electoral collapse it suffered in the 2021 vote.
Foremost among those factors were the revisions the party made to its rhetoric, policies and the nature of its presence on the street during its years in opposition, alongside a reassessment of its previous experience and the outcome of the 2021 elections. This coincided with attempts to reorganize its administrative and organizational structures and to move closer to the language of ordinary citizens and their daily concerns, in addition to adopting a political program that gave broad space to bread-and-butter issues directly affecting Moroccan citizens, foremost among them prices, employment, health, education, housing, social protection and fighting corruption, alongside identity-related issues.
The party’s shift from government benches to the opposition also constituted an important factor in its political repositioning, as it gave it broader room to reclaim opposition rhetoric and to distance itself somewhat from the costs of day-to-day administration and the consequences of government decisions. By contrast, responsibility for confronting economic and social pressures and the repercussions of rising prices and problems related to employment and public services shifted to the parties that made up the outgoing government, which found themselves in direct confrontation with public criticism and voters’ assessments of their record over the past five years.
In that sense, the Justice and Development Party benefited from its new position in the opposition to regain some of the political and popular space it had lost during its years in power, while the majority parties directly bore the cost of government performance and the gap that accompanied it between the aspirations of segments of Moroccans and what was actually achieved on the ground. This provided the party with a more favorable environment to present itself once again as one of the leading voices of opposition in the political scene.
Between presence and a protest vote
There is another factor, no less important, that contributed to the rise of the Justice and Development Party: the noticeable decline in the popularity of the majority parties that made up the outgoing government, which was clearly reflected in their share of seats. The National Rally of Independents fell from 102 seats in the 2021 elections to 66, while the Istiqlal Party’s representation dropped from 81 to 65 seats, and the total number of seats held by the parties of the outgoing governing coalition declined from 269 to 228.
This decline revives the debate over how to read voting trends in the latest elections, and whether the gains achieved by the Islamist party partly reflect a punitive, protest vote against the performance of the previous government and its economic and social record, or whether they indicate that the party has recovered part of its popular following and electoral base — and perhaps that the appeal of its Islamist-rooted discourse has grown after the shifts that have taken place in its political and media rhetoric over the past five years.
In the same context, the return of the party’s secretary-general and former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane to the forefront of the party scene marked a turning point in efforts to revive the Justice and Development Party and restore its political momentum. Benkirane remains one of the party’s most prominent political assets, given his popular appeal and his ability to communicate directly with segments of voters, in addition to his populist rhetoric, which has long been one of the party’s tools for political and electoral mobilization.
Accordingly, Benkirane’s renewed presence helped restore a measure of vitality to the party’s discourse and reconnect it with part of its traditional base, making his presence one of the factors that can be taken into account in explaining the electoral leap the party achieved and its return to the circle of the main forces in Morocco’s political scene.
Palestine present in the background
There is another factor that cannot be ignored, regardless of the actual extent of its impact on voting trends: the Palestinian cause and its historic place in the Moroccan conscience. The Justice and Development Party’s adherence to its anti-normalization rhetoric toward Israel gave it additional room to connect with segments of the Moroccan street that still view Palestine as one of the foremost Arab causes and among the most present, regardless of the state’s official position and the course of its relations with Israel.
As Morocco has taken steps over recent years toward normalizing relations with Israel, accompanied by developments in the level of relations and diplomatic representation between the two sides in the hours leading up to the elections, the Justice and Development Party, by contrast, maintained its anti-normalization approach. That stance aligned with the rejection expressed by segments of the Moroccan street through numerous events and protest actions opposing this path.
Even so, an objective reading of the results does not allow the Palestinian cause and the normalization file to be treated as the main driver behind the major shift in voting toward the party, especially given the overlap of many economic, social and political considerations that influenced voters’ choices. But even if this factor was not decisive in determining the electoral outcome, it can at the very least be seen as one of the elements of political mobilization that helped the party recover part of its popular presence and gave it room to distinguish itself from the rest of the political forces, especially as it continues to present itself as one of the most prominent Moroccan parties adhering to a declared position rejecting the path of normalization.
A return, not dominance
Although the party more than quadrupled its parliamentary representation compared with the 2021 elections, reflecting a strong return to the political scene that is difficult to ignore, it remains far from its position in the 2016 elections, when it led the field with 125 seats and succeeded in heading the government. Therefore, the scale of this return should not be overstated or burdened with meanings beyond its actual limits, especially in light of the weak turnout in the latest elections and its marked decline compared with the previous contest, in which participation exceeded 50%.
What stands out most in reading these results, however, is that the Justice and Development Party managed to recover its presence after the collapse it suffered in the previous elections and the sharp organizational, political and popular decline that followed. This indicates, in one way or another, that the Islamist experience in Morocco did not end as many had argued in the aftermath of the 2021 elections, even if it has not yet regained the luster and presence it enjoyed years ago. But it has, at the very least, recovered some of its political vitality — something that did not happen in other experiences in neighboring countries — in a step that could be built on in the future if the party decides to continue its path of return and re-entrench its presence within Morocco’s party map.
This is where a set of questions emerges that Benkirane and his colleagues will have to answer in the coming phase: What kind of party is seeking to return once again to the forefront of the political arena? What are the features of the new Islamist experience it wants to present? And to what extent will it differ from its previous experience in government and opposition? The answers to these questions carry an important part of the contours of the party’s future and its ability to turn its current electoral gains into a more sustainable political trajectory.
It is true that over the past years the party has succeeded in adopting a somewhat different discourse, one that has largely moved beyond confining its presence to its ideological reference alone and has sought to combine that with issues more closely tied to citizens’ daily lives, from prices, employment, facilities and services to fighting corruption and social issues. This shift places the party before a different test in the coming phase.
Yet the coming political competition may not be between what is Islamist and what is non-Islamist as much as it will be between those who can read shifts in the street, speak its language and engage with its daily priorities, and those who remain captive to their ideological discourse and traditional calculations. Here, the most important question remains: Can the Justice and Development Party read the Moroccan scene realistically and turn the notable electoral comeback it achieved in these elections into a political project capable of enduring and building on it in the contests ahead?