🔴 Morocco election 2026 live tracker: Turnout hits 21% at 3 p.m., Tangier case under investigation

Hello and welcome to Hespress English’s live coverage as Morocco prepares to vote in the 2026 legislative elections.

Key facts:

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

• • • The Interior Ministry has issued its second communiqué 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 communiqué: 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.