Tanzania’s main opposition party, CHADEMA, which maintains the position of “No Reforms, No Election”, has rejected the voter register statistics released by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC), arguing that the figures contradict the data from the 2022 Population and Housing Census.
Speaking on behalf of CHADEMA, the party’s Director of Training and Organization, John Pambalu, stated that the number of registered voters released by INEC exceeds the number of people aged 14 and above reported in the 2022 census.
“Even if no one had emigrated, no one had died, and absolutely nothing had changed — and we considered only Tanzanians aged 14 — and among them, only those aged 15 and above are eligible to vote, that group totals 35 million. Then we are told by Judge Mwambegele [INEC Chairperson] that 37 million Tanzanians have registered. So where did the extra 2.6 million people come from, exceeding the number of those eligible to vote according to the Government’s own census?” said Pambalu.
On July 26, 2025, INEC announced that a total of 37,655,559 voters had registered in the permanent voter register, representing a 26.55 percent increase from the 29.7 million voters registered in 2020.
“The report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) says that no country in the world can achieve 100 percent voter registration among its eligible population,: insisted Pambalu, ‘That would make us the first country in the world to achieve this,”
