Congo President Likely to Secure Second Term in Vote – Poll Shows

19th December, 2023

– Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi is expected to win a second term in elections set to take place on Wednesday, an opinion poll showed.

Tshisekedi would garner 49.3% of the vote, with his closest rival likely to be businessman Moise Katumbi on 28.1%, according to the survey published by Congo-based Le Bureau d’Etudes, de Recherche et de Consulting International. The poll was conducted with Congolese non-governmental organization Ebuteli and New York University’s Congo Research Group.

Martin Fayulu, the runner-up to Tshisekedi in a disputed 2018 election, is expected to come a distant third with 6.9%, the poll showed.

Congo is nearly the size of Western Europe with little infrastructure after decades of mismanagement and war. Twenty-five candidates are on the ballot to replace incumbent Tshisekedi.

More than 100,000 people are running for office — nearly double the number of candidates in the last election in 2018 — in part due to the country’s first local elections in decades. About 44 million Congolese have registered to vote, according to the nation’s electoral commission.

The pollsters surveyed 4,680 out of 5,500 people contacted by phone from a sample of 450,000 people of voting age on Dec. 15-17. More than 76% of respondents said they plan to vote in the election, according to the poll, which has a margin of error of less than three percentage points.

Congo is the world’s biggest supplier of battery mineral cobalt and one of the largest producers of copper.