NPP Sweeps Sri Lanka’s Local Elections, But Vote Share Plummets

Sri Lanka’s local government elections on May 6 have thrown up interesting results.

Although the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) achieved a decisive victory by winning 266 out of 339 local councils, its national vote share has collapsed from 6.8 million in the November 2024 parliamentary elections to just 4.5 million in the just-concluded local elections — a staggering 34 percent drop.

Opposition parties performed poorly. While the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), the main opposition party, emerged the runner-up, having won control of 13 local governments, neither former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s United National Party (UNP) nor the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the party of the Rajapaksa family, were able to capture even a single local body. Two ethnicity-based political parties, the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) and the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), won 37 and five local councils, respectively.

The local government elections were long overdue. They were to be held in 2022, but Presidents Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe delayed them, fearing electoral defeat.

The opposition political parties, especially the SJB and the SLPP, are trying to frame the dip in the NPP’s vote share as the beginning of the end for the party.

But the truth is far more complicated.

While the NPP has underperformed, the results do not indicate a wholesale rejection or widespread disillusionment with the party.

In the May 6 election, the NPP received close to 44 percent of the vote. This is similar to what they received in November 2024, at the Elpitiya local government election.  The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) also secured around 44 percent of the vote in the 2018 local council election, which was then seen as a decisive electoral victory. These examples show that winning parties, in the last decade, usually secure about 45 percent of the valid votes cast at local government elections.

To understand the May 6 election results, one must examine how Sri Lankans vote in local polls.

Local government elections in Sri Lanka, while an indicator of national sentiment, are also decided by hyper-local factors such as the reputation of the candidate, caste ties, and even petty village rivalries. Ideology and party loyalty matter less in the local government elections than in national ones.

There were over 75,000 candidates, representing 49 parties and 257 independent groups, in the fray in the recent local government elections, and the NPP, despite its formidable national machinery, never stood a chance of replicating its 2024 landslide. Voters weren’t choosing between economic visions or foreign policy platforms; they were picking a neighbor they like to fix potholes and manage garbage collection.

The opposition’s glee over the raw vote decline misses this fundamental truth: local elections are about familiarity, not revolutions.

This is also the third election in nine months, and voter fatigue had set in. Most Sri Lankans, especially the younger, the socially conscious, and educated, were keenly interested in the presidential and parliamentary elections. However, there was little passion left for a third election, which most people knew the NPP would win easily. Turnout hovered between 50-60 percent, a sharp drop from the 80 percent recorded in 2018. The election was also held on a weekday. Given that the average NPP voter is younger and working, they likely chose to skip an election they saw as less important.

Low-turnout elections always punish incumbents, but they don’t necessarily reflect a loss of support. They reflect disengagement. The NPP’s challenge now isn’t just winning back defectors; it is re-energizing the millions who still back the government but didn’t see this election as worth their time.

That said, the NPP is partly to blame for the drop in votes. The NPP’s campaign lacked the ferocity and focus of the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2024.

This is a lesson for the NPP; the party must realize it can’t take its base for granted.

The NPP won in 2024 by promising a break from the old politics of intimidation and patronage and vowing to eradicate corruption. But voters feel that the party has been slow in delivering these promises. There are also concerns about law and order, with violence associated with organized criminal gangs growing.

However, the opposition has failed to capitalize on these issues, especially on law and order. The SJB won just 13 councils, while the SLPP, though slightly resurgent, remains unpalatable for most outside its rural heartlands.

The opposition parties together didn’t dent the NPP’s control over three-fourths of local bodies. A  fragmented opposition works to the NPP’s benefit; as long as the opposition vote is divided among Wickremesinghe’s UNP, Premadasa’s SJB, and the Rajapaksa loyalists, the NPP party can weather minor setbacks. However, given that the UNP, SJB, and SLPP have demonstrated repeatedly that they can come together to ensure their political survival, the NPP cannot afford to be complacent.

The results have not weakened the government, but they also signal the end of the NPP’s honeymoon with voters, and the start of a harder phase.

The NPP now faces a choice. It can dismiss the results as a fluke and double down on its current path, or it can read the results for what they are: a plea from voters to deliver on promises, and prove that their demand for “system change” should be met with more than mere slogans.