Population, 2021 voting patterns and the new electoral geography of The Gambia
By Dr Ebrima Ceesay
As The Gambia moves toward the 5th December 2026 presidential election, one of the most important questions is also one of the easiest to misunderstand: Where, geographically, is this upcoming presidential election actually being decided?
The answer cannot be found simply by looking at where the Gambia’s largest population lives. Nor can it be found by reproducing the 2021 presidential results and assuming that the same political geography will return five years later.
The Gambia’s 2026 presidential contest is taking place across a country whose population has continued to grow, whose urban and peri-urban areas have expanded, whose political alliances have been reorganised, and whose voters are being approached by a different set of political formations than those that contested the 2021 presidential election.
Three datasets provide an unusually useful way of examining this changing map: the 2021 presidential election results, which show how voters actually voted; the 2024 Population and Housing Census, which shows where people live and how the population is structured; and the August 2026 Gambia Participates opinion poll, which provides a more recent – though necessarily limited – snapshot of voter intention across the Gambia
Taken together, these sources do not tell us who will win the December 2026 presidential election. They tell us something more useful: where the Gambia’s electoral weight is concentrated, where political loyalties were strongest in the December 2021 presidential election, and where the available evidence suggests that the political map may be changing.
The first map: where Gambians live
The starting point is demographic. The Gambia’s 2024 census puts Gambia’s population at 2,422,712, with females accounting for 51 per cent and males 49 per cent. The population remains exceptionally young: 40.8 per cent were below the age of 15, while 56.2 per cent were between 15 and 64. In fact, using the 2025 UN-based population estimates for The Gambia, about 68.3% of The Gambia’s population is under 30 years old.
The Gambia’s population is also highly unevenly distributed. The census records 1,095,708 people in Brikama Local Government Area (LGA) and 341,915 in Kanifing, compared with much smaller populations in several of The Gambia’s other LGAs. Banjul, for example, has a population of just 21,982 in the 2024 census figures.
That matters because Brikama and Kanifing together account for roughly 63 per cent of the national population of the Gambia. This is one of the most important facts about the contemporary Gambian electoral map. The centre of demographic gravity is no longer simply the historic capital.
It is increasingly the Greater Banjul-Kanifing-Brikama urban and peri-urban corridor. The 2024 census itself describes the demographic change in those terms. Between 2013 and 2024, population density increased sharply in Kanifing and Brikama, with the report linking the change to urbanisation and economic growth. National annual population growth between 2013 and 2024 was 2.5 per cent, down from 3.1 per cent during the previous intercensal period. But there is an important distinction.
Indeed, population concentration is not the same thing as electoral concentration. A large population does not automatically mean a particular political preference. The 2024 census tells us where Gambians live. It does not tell us how they intend to vote. That distinction is essential when demographic data are brought into electoral analysis.
The second map: where voters actually voted in the 2021 presidential election
The 2021 presidential election provides the first genuinely electoral map against which 2026 can be compared. The official Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) results show considerable geographical variation in the distribution of support among the leading candidates.
Nationally, Adama Barrow won 53.23 per cent, Ousainou Darboe 27.72 per cent and Mamma Kandeh 12.32 per cent. But national percentages conceal a much more complicated geography.
In parts of the urban belt, the contest was considerably closer than the national result suggests. Bakau, for example, gave Ousainou Darboe of UDP about 45.5 per cent compared with roughly 40.3 per cent for Adama Barrow of NPP.
In Brikama North, Ousainou Darboe also led Adama Barrow, approximately 43.9 per cent to 39.1 per cent. Yet the neighbouring Brikama South constituency produced a different pattern: Adama Barrow of NPP received about 42.4 per cent against Ousainou Darboe’s 34.5 per cent, while Mamma Kandeh of GDC took approximately 17.7 per cent.
The differences become even more pronounced as one moves across The Gambia. In Kiang West, Ousainou Darboe won approximately 67.8 per cent, compared with 26.7 per cent for Adama Barrow.
In Basse, by contrast, Adama Barrow received about 84 per cent, while Ousainou Darboe obtained approximately 9.4 per cent. And in Foñi Kansala, Mamma Kandeh, who was backed by Yahya Jammeh during the 2021 presidential election, received approximately 70.7 per cent, with Adama Barrow on 19.8 per cent and Ousainou Darboe on just 4.8 per cent.
These examples demonstrate why the 2021 presidential election cannot be reduced to a simple national ranking of candidates. It was a collection of different local electoral geographies. Some constituencies were competitive. Others were heavily tilted toward one candidate. Some areas that were geographically close produced very different results. That, in my view, is the baseline from which the 2026 election has to be understood.
The demographic map and the electoral map do not perfectly overlap. This is perhaps the most important finding from putting the census and the 2021 presidential election results side by side. The places with the largest populations are not necessarily the places where one candidate dominated in 2021.
Brikama LGA is the clearest example. Brikama LGA is now by far The Gambia’s largest LGA, with more than one million people. Yet its constituencies produced different political outcomes in 2021.
That tells us something important about the Gambia’s contemporary West Coast Region: It is not one electoral constituency.
It is a collection of constituencies containing different communities, migration histories, socioeconomic circumstances, age structures and political networks.
The same principle applies to Kanifing. The Kanifing municipality’s demographic weight is enormous, but the political behaviour of its constituencies should not be assumed to be uniform.
This is why LGA-level demographic analysis must be combined with constituency-level electoral results. The 2024 census gives us the broad landscape. The presidential election results show us the political contours within that landscape.
The urban question
If there is one part of the electoral map that deserves particular attention in 2026, it is the Gambia’s rapidly expanding urban and peri-urban belt. This is not because urban voters necessarily form a single political bloc. They do not. It is because demographic weight and political competition increasingly intersect there.
Kanifing and Brikama contain very large populations, while their proximity to the Gambia’s economic and administrative centre means that they bring together voters with very different economic circumstances and social backgrounds.
The August 2026 Gambia Participates survey provides an important new piece of evidence. The survey interviewed 1,556 registered voters across all 53 constituencies between July 27 and August 10, 2026. It recorded national voting intention of 32 per cent for Barrow, 25 per cent for Darboe and 19 per cent for Talib Bensouda, with 17 per cent undecided.
But the national figures again conceal geographical variation. The Gambia Participates reported Talib Bensouda as particularly competitive in the urban West Coast and Kanifing areas, while Adama Barrow was stronger in several other parts of the Gambia.
The significance of this finding is not that it predicts what will happen in the 5th December 2026 presidential election. It does not. Gambia Participates itself cautioned against treating the survey as a forecast. Its significance is that the 2026 snapshot does not simply reproduce the 2021 electoral map. That is the point worth watching.
But the rural map remains politically important. The concentration of population around Greater Banjul should not lead to the conclusion that the rest of the Gambia has become electorally secondary.
The 2021 presidential election results demonstrate why. Across the North Bank, Lower River, Central River and Upper River regions, constituencies produced very different outcomes.
In 2021, in Central Baddibu, Ousainu Darboe of UDP narrowly led incumbent President Adama Barrow of NPP. In Sami, Ousainu Darboe also held a narrow advantage. In Lower Baddibu and Jarra West, Adama Barrow was ahead.
Further east, however, the picture became much more favourable to Adama Barrow. Barrow recorded approximately 68.8 per cent in Jimara, 65.8 per cent in Sandu, and 84 per cent in Basse.
These results underline a critical feature of the Gambian electoral system: the political importance of a constituency is not determined solely by its population size.
A constituency with a smaller population can still be politically significant if the vote is closely contested or if relatively modest changes in turnout or candidate support materially alter the local balance.
Conversely, a constituency with a large population may be less electorally competitive if one political formation has a substantial advantage. This is why population size, competitiveness and historical voting behaviour need to be examined separately.
As for Fońi, it remains a distinctive electoral geography. The 2021 presidential election results also produced one of the clearest examples of the danger of treating The Gambia as a single electoral market.
Foñi constituencies displayed a markedly different pattern from much of the country. In Foñi Bintang, Mamma Kandeh received approximately 57.7 per cent. In Foñi Kansala, Mamma Kandeh’s share rose to roughly 70.7 per cent.
Elsewhere in Foñi, however, the margins were different. In Foñi Brefet, for example, Adama Barrow and Mamma Kandeh were separated by less than a percentage point. This matters for the 2026 analysis because Mamma Kandeh is no longer contesting the presidential election in the same political configuration as 2021.
Mamma Kandeh’s Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC) has entered an alliance with Adama Barrow’s NPP. That creates an obvious analytical question: How much of Mamma Kandeh’s previous support is attached to Mamma Kandeh personally, how much is connected to GDC organisation, and how much, if any, could be reflected in support for the new alliance?
The data cannot answer that question in advance. The 2021 results tell us where Mamma Kandeh performed strongly. They do not establish that those voters will automatically support the NPP-GDC alliance in 2026. That distinction is particularly important in Foñi and elsewhere where Mamma Kandeh’s 2021 performance was unusually strong.
To be continued tomorrow.
Ebrima Ceesay, is a former Gambian journalist now an academic based in the UK.
