ELECTION ANALYSIS | Hichilema Expands Footprint, Mundubile Rebuilds Old PF Vote

ELECTION ANALYSIS | Hichilema Expands Footprint, Mundubile Rebuilds Old PF Vote

The final presidential numbers tell a more interesting story than the simple 60.7% to 38.0% headline. Hakainde Hichilema finished with 2,967,326 votes against Brian Mundubile’s 1,856,217, a margin of 1,111,109 votes. Hichilema carried 124 constituencies against Mundubile’s 102, a difference of only 22 constituencies despite a national vote gap exceeding one million.

This confirms the central argument of our election analysis throughout the count: constituencies do not elect the President. Votes do. Where those votes are accumulated, and by what margins, determines who enters State House.

Mundubile’s 1.856 million votes deserve closer examination. Edgar Lungu received roughly 1.81 million votes in the 2021 presidential election, meaning Mundubile has finished only around 46,000 votes above Lungu’s previous national tally. The comparison cannot establish voter-by-voter continuity, especially because turnout, registration, candidates and political circumstances changed between elections. But geographically, the resemblance is difficult to ignore.

Mundubile dominated Eastern, Luapula, Muchinga and Northern, the core of the former PF presidential coalition, while remaining highly competitive across Lusaka and the Copperbelt. The evidence therefore suggests Tonse successfully reconstructed much of the old PF electoral bloc, but did not expand it sufficiently to build a winning national coalition.

Hichilema’s victory was built differently. His three strongest provinces alone produced extraordinary numbers: Southern delivered 718,569 votes against Mundubile’s 26,260; Western 436,624 against 11,972; and North-Western 387,751 against 14,598. Across those three provinces, Hichilema accumulated 1,542,944 votes to Mundubile’s 52,830, creating a staggering advantage of about 1.49 million votes. This surplus alone was larger than Hichilema’s eventual national winning margin. Mundubile could win several constituencies elsewhere, sometimes convincingly, and still watch those gains disappear once results arrived from Hichilema’s deepest strongholds.

The northern and eastern counterweight was substantial, but nowhere near equivalent. Mundubile took 350,468 votes in Eastern against Hichilema’s 187,654; 235,439 to 99,569 in Luapula; 143,409 to 63,463 in Muchinga; and 229,744 to 126,536 in Northern. Combined, those four provinces gave Mundubile about 959,060 votes against Hichilema’s 477,222, a Mundubile advantage of roughly 481,838. This is the election in one calculation.

Hichilema’s surplus across Southern, Western and North-Western was more than three times the size of Mundubile’s surplus across Eastern, Luapula, Muchinga and Northern. Mundubile won important territory. Hichilema won his territory by much larger margins.

Central Province then strengthened Hichilema’s national cushion. He collected 259,432 votes against Mundubile’s 139,470, giving the incumbent another advantage approaching 120,000 votes. This matters because Central has long contained politically competitive communities rather than behaving like the deepest partisan strongholds. Hichilema did not depend exclusively on overwhelming victories in his traditional base. He also won decisively in a province where a nationally viable opposition needed to contain him.

Then come Zambia’s two great urban political theatres, and here the result becomes particularly instructive. Copperbelt was virtually tied: Hichilema 371,724, Mundubile 370,085. The difference was just 1,639 votes across a province containing 29 constituencies. Lusaka actually went to Mundubile, but narrowly: 334,772 against Hichilema’s 316,004, a margin of only 18,768.

Tonse therefore demonstrated genuine urban strength. What it did not obtain was the urban landslide required to compensate for Hichilema’s rural and regional surpluses. Winning Lusaka by fewer than 19,000 votes means little when Southern alone produces a Hichilema advantage approaching 700,000.

This also explains why the campaign could feel dramatically different from the eventual national result. Political conversation is concentrated in Lusaka and the Copperbelt. Economic frustration, load shedding, business pressures and cost-of-living concerns were highly visible there, and Mundubile clearly benefited.

But the final table shows how dangerous it is to extrapolate national opinion from Zambia’s loudest urban spaces. Lusaka and Copperbelt together produced 650,776 votes for Hichilema and 704,857 for Mundubile, an opposition advantage of only 54,081. Hichilema could absorb that entire deficit several times over from individual parts of his broader electoral base. Urban dissatisfaction existed. It simply did not translate into the scale of electoral rejection required to remove him.

The deeper political conclusion is therefore about coalition expansion. Mundubile has emerged with a sizeable opposition constituency and appears to have inherited much of the electoral geography associated with Lungu and PF. But inheritance is not expansion. To win the presidency, the opposition will eventually have to move substantially beyond the old PF ceiling, penetrate Hichilema’s western, Northwestern and southern fortress, compete harder in Central and convert urban frustration into much larger turnout and margins.

Hichilema, meanwhile, should not mistake 60.7% nationally for uniform approval. He lost significant territory and faced an opposition capable of winning 102 constituencies. His victory came because he combined overwhelming stronghold margins with sufficient resilience elsewhere.

Mundubile reconstructed a formidable opposition map. Hichilema built the larger national vote. In Zambia’s presidential system, the second achievement is the one that delivers State House.

– The People’s Brief | Ollus R. Ndomu & Goran Handya