Elections and Money: Perspectives from Members of Parliament in Zambia

This cost of elections study sought to estimate the cost of winning the 2021 election as a Member of Parliament in Zambia, as well as to identify the cost drivers and collect perspectives of members of parliament on electoral reforms in Zambia. We used a carefully designed questionnaire: broken down into four different components, namely, pre-adoption; adoption and nomination; campaign; and post-election and interviewed 80 members of parliament (MPs) out of the 156 elected members.

Unlike other studies, we did not include cost information on candidates who lost the parliamentary elections in 2021, as this allowed for the collection of uniform information at all stages, including pre and post-election spending. However, we held three focus group discussions in Kitwe, Choma and Lusaka to gather additional qualitative information from a target of 120 unsuccessful candidates, former members of parliament and political party officials, in order to provide more context to the quantitative results.

We estimated the average cost of winning the 2021 election as a member of parliament, at K3.8 million (or USD 192,266.3), as the sum of the average cost at all the four stages of expenditure, and that the 80 MPs spent about K307.92 million (about USD 15.4 million) to win the 2021 elections. The majority of the cost that the candidates incurred was during the pre-adoption stage, accounting for over 55% of the total average expenditure during the 2021 elections. The second highest expenditure was during the post-election stage, even though this survey only considered the first 18 months after the election.

Though the campaign period accounted for the highest weighted expenditure per month, it accounted for only 18.4% of the total average, while the expenditure at adoption stage accounted for only 4.5% of the total average expenditure.

Overall, we established that male winning candidates spent more during the 2021 election as compared to female winning candidates, and that middle-aged (36-55 years) elected candidates spent more across all the stages, while younger candidates spent more during the campaign period and post election. Further, we found that elected candidates with disability spent more to win the 2021 elections, while elected candidates with higher income also spent more as compared to winning candidates with less income. The study also established that elected candidates from the United Party for National Development (UPND) spent more as compared to winning candidates from the Patriotic Front (PF) and independent candidates due to higher contributions to presidential campaigns during adoption stage, and higher pre-adoption expenditure due to longer nurturing periods.

In order to identify the main sources of electoral expenditure, we asked the winning candidates to select their top sources of financing during the four stages. The results indicated that the top two sources of funding for elections were salary and savings, and income from business. The share of salary and savings increased from the pre-adoption stage to the post-election stage, while the share of business, as a source of financing, reduced from pre-adoption and nomination to the post-election stage

 

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