ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — President Alassane Ouattara won the Ivory Coast election 2025 in provisional results announced Monday after the Oct. 25 vote, taking 89.77% and securing a fourth term as his strongest rivals were kept off the ballot by court decisions. The lopsided tally followed eligibility rulings that barred opposition heavyweights Tidjane Thiam and former President Laurent Gbagbo, fueling criticism that the race was effectively decided before ballots were cast, Oct. 27, 2025.
Ivory Coast election 2025 results: landslide margin and turnout
According to provisional results released by the Independent Electoral Commission, Ouattara, 83, won 89.77% of votes cast. Former commerce minister Jean-Louis Billon finished second with 3.09%, and former first lady Simone Gbagbo received 2.42%.
Turnout was about 50%, comparable to the 2015 and 2020 presidential elections but well below the roughly 80% participation seen in the first round of 2010. Reuters reported that authorities deployed 44,000 security personnel and imposed a curfew in Yamoussoukro ahead of voting after scattered protests and arrests, while Ouattara said he would use the new term to keep growing the economy and prepare a handover to a younger generation. Thiam called the Ivory Coast election 2025 “not a real election,” saying voters faced a climate of fear and weak participation.
Ivory Coast election 2025 and the court decisions that barred top rivals
The Constitutional Council validated five candidacies out of 60 filed, including Ouattara’s, after it rejected Thiam — the former Credit Suisse chief and candidate for the Democratic Party of Ivory Coast — on eligibility grounds tied to his past French nationality, according to Reuters. Ivorian law requires presidential candidates to be Ivorian citizens and bars them from holding another nationality, and the final list left a reduced field that included Simone Gbagbo and former ministers Billon, Ahoua Don Mello and Henriette Lagou.
Thiam said the exclusions made the Ivory Coast election 2025 a “coronation” for Ouattara. The council cited both men’s removal from the electoral roll — Thiam for nationality-related eligibility issues and Gbagbo because of a past criminal conviction — according to an Africanews report produced with The Associated Press.
How past crises shaped the Ivory Coast election 2025 debate
Disputes over term limits and eligibility have shadowed Ivorian politics for years. In 2020, Ouattara won a controversial third term with 94.27% after an opposition boycott, Reuters reported at the time, and opponents argued the constitution barred another run — a charge Ouattara rejected by saying a 2016 constitution reset the clock. That 2020 election was also marked by deadly violence and accusations of an uneven playing field, and the electoral commission put turnout at 53.90%, Al Jazeera reported.
Gbagbo’s refusal to concede the 2010 presidential election sparked months of violence that killed at least 3,000 people, an episode that still shapes fears of instability when major candidates are excluded, according to an Associated Press account published when he returned from The Hague in 2021 after his acquittal at the International Criminal Court.
After the Ivory Coast election 2025, the Constitutional Council confirmed Ouattara’s fourth-term victory, Reuters reported in November, and he was sworn in at the presidential palace in Abidjan in December. “This vote is a choice for stability, peace, and development,” Ouattara said at the inauguration, while official figures cited by The Associated Press said violence around the election period killed at least 11 people and led to more than 1,650 arrests.
