Elections in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka elects on the national level a head of state – the president – and a legislature. Sri Lanka has a multi-party system, with two dominant political parties. All elections are administered by the Election Commission of Sri Lanka.

The president is directly elected for a five-year term, through a version of Instant-runoff voting in which electors rank up to three candidates, and limited to only two rounds in total. If no candidate wins a majority in the first round of voting, second and third preferences from ballots whose first preference candidate has been eliminated are used to determine the winner.^[1] However, there was never an instance where a "run-off" count was needed since the introduction of directly elected president in the 1980s until the 2024 election. No candidate reached 50% in the first count in that election, so the second count was performed.

The Parliament has 225 members, elected for a five-year term, 196 members elected in multi-seat constituencies through proportional representation system where each party is allocated a number of seats from the quota for each district according to the proportion of the total vote that party obtains in the district. The other 29 which is called the national list are appointed by each party secretary according to the island wide proportional vote the party obtains.

The Local government bodies in Sri Lanka;

• Municipal Councils
• Urban Councils
• Pradeshiya Sabha

are elected through the mixed electoral system.

• Electoral calendar
• Electoral system

• Department of Elections
• Adam Carr's Election Archive
• www.Srilankanelections.com - A website featuring Sri Lankan elections and results.