Number of MCAs by Political Party
There has been 3 elections since adoption of the 2010 Constitution in Kenya. In each of it there has been competitive sub-national elections at the county level for both the executive and the legislative arms of county governments. There are 1450 elective positions for all the 47 counties varying from 10 for the counties (Isiolo, Lamu) with the least number to 85 in Nairobi City County. Below I present some descriptive analysis of the diversity of parties that are represented within county assemblies in Kenya for the 3 elections.
Number of county assembly wards
According to the Office of the Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP), there are 90 fully registered political parties. The figure below show the number of counties with varied number of members of county assembly (MCA). More than a quarter of the counties have 30 elected MCAs.
Number of political parties
Across all elections, there was a total of 85 different political parties with at least one elected MCA. There were 46, 41, and 48 political parties in 2013, 2017, and 2022 respectively with at least one elected MCA.
Total number of MCAs by party
Below is a summary of the top 10 parties based on the number of elected MCAs in all county assemblies. From the 2013 general election, Orange Democratic Movement had the highest number of MCAs (384), with The National Alliance (TNA), and United Republican Party (URP) having 353 and 249 MCAs respectively. The three parties controlled 68% of the elected MCAs. Before the 2017 general election, both TNA and URP merged and formed Jubilee Party which then had 582 MCAs compared to 340 of ODM during the 2017 elections. It is notable during these election the number of independent MCAs was the third highest number with 109 members.
In the recent 2022 elections, the new United Democratic Party had the highest number of MCAs with 558 compared to 313 of ODM and 114 independent MCAs. Notably is increase in the number of elected independent candidates and the consistent decrease in the numbers of the ODM party.
Number of MCAs by party
Below is the overall summary of the number of MCAs for each party during each election.
