A woman casts her vote during Tanzania's general election at a polling station in Dar es Salaam on October 29, 2025.
Tanzania may have 37.6 million voters who may decide their next President, MPs or councillors. On voting day, most commentators had predicted victory for incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who faces little competition from 16 fringe runners.
Yet, in the autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar, the contest is far from obvious. Some 996,303 voters had registered to vote on the archipelago, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission of Tanzania (INEC).
They will elect their president and local representatives as well as representatives to the national assembly. According to INEC, Zanzibar is to elect 50 MPs.
At the local presidential level, the contest is between the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the opposition ACT-Wazalendo party.
Technically, these parties have been in a unity government on the archipelago since December 2020, when the ACT-Wazalendo leader Seif Sharif Hamad became vice-president on the island. He died in February 2021 and was replaced by Othman Masoud Othman.
Now Othman is a rival of President Hussein Ali Mwinyi. This week, he said CCM had planned chaos during polls to discourage voters.
A woman casts her vote during Tanzania's general election at a polling station in Dar es Salaam on October 29, 2025.
“It is obvious that our competitors in CCM are afraid of defeat, and to us, any chaos would be a hideout for them to try and dodge reality that our party will be winning this election,” he said in an online briefing on October 27.
“We demand that anything that happens at polling stations contrary to the law should be urgently addressed.”
Zanzibar also had the unique opportunity of allowing special government workers like the police to vote early, something Act-Wazalendo had argued was clothed in secrecy.
Mwinyi rebutted the accusations, telling reporters on Wednesday that CCM was a peace-loving party.
“We are glad that we have reached every voter in every corner of the country. And we are happy that there has been no incident. We are happy that our competitors have campaigned too, but we say the best policies are those of CCM,” Mwinyi said after voting on Wednesday.
Tanzania normally grants Zanzibar some autonomy, having formed a union between the mainland and Zanzibar to create the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964.
A man shows his inked finger after casting his vote during Tanzania's general election at a polling station in Dar es Salaam on October 29, 2025.
Othman, nonetheless, had told voters he was against the “corruption” in CCM, offering his party as a better alternative. He also offered to better the retirement benefits for civil servants, arguing most had retired into “debt.”
But as before, Othman argued the electoral commission was under “control” of CCM.
“The process may be rigged, but Zanzibaris will still come out in their masses to vote for ACT Wazalendo,” he said on Monday.
The numbers
- Registered voters: 37,647,235
- Tanzania Mainland: 36,650,932 voters
- Zanzibar: 996,303 voters
- Women: 18,950,801 (50.34 percent)
- Men: 18,696,434 (49.66 percent)
- Constituencies: 272 (222 on mainland, 50 in Zanzibar)
- Civic wards: 3,950 (110 in Zanzibar)
- Polling stations: 99, 895 stations
- Participating political parties in parliamentary and civic polls: 18
- Participating political parties in presidential race: 17
