2024 Sri Lankan presidential election

Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Sri Lanka sometime between 17 September and 16 October 2024, according to the Constitution of Sri Lanka. Voters will elect a president for a term of five years. Incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe is eligible to run for re-election.

Electoral system

The President of Sri Lanka is elected via limited ranked voting. Voters can express up to three ranked preferences for President. If no candidate receives over 50% of valid votes on the first count, all candidates except for the two candidates receiving the highest number of votes are eliminated. The second and third preferences of the eliminated candidates are distributed until one of the remaining two candidates receives an outright majority. In practice, this system has seen little use, as each direct election going back to the first in 1981 has resulted in a candidate from one of the two major parties or alliances at the time winning in the first count. For this reason, many citizens opt to mark only one candidate, and many are wholly unaware that multiple candidates can be ranked at all.

Background

The last direct presidential elections held in Sri Lanka were in 2019, where SLPP candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the election in a landslide victory, defeating his main opponent Sajith Premadasa. Rajapaksa would eventually resign on 14 July 2022 amidst the 2022 Sri Lankan protests. This triggered an indirect presidential election via Parliament a week later, to elect a successor according to the Article 40 of the Constitution. Then-incumbent Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was appointed by Rajapaksa just two months earlier, received the most votes and was sworn in as the 9th President of Sri Lanka on 21 July 2022.

Article 40 of the Constitution of Sri Lanka states that "Any person so succeeding to the office of President shall hold office only for the unexpired period of the term of office of the President vacating office." Accordingly, the next presidential election must be held no later than November 2024.

Candidates

Declared

Potential

United National Party

• Ranil Wickremesinghe, current President of Sri Lanka (since 2022), former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (1993–1994, 2001–2004, 2015–2019, 2022)

Declined

Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna

• Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 8th President of Sri Lanka (2019–2022)
• Basil Rajapaksa, former Minister of Finance (2021–2022), former Member of Parliament (2007–2010, 2010–2015, 2021–2022)

Sri Lanka Freedom Party

• Maithripala Sirisena, 7th President of Sri Lanka (2015–2019), current Member of Parliament (1989–2015, since 2020)

Opinion polls

Nationwide

Favourability ratings

January 2024

In IHP SLOTS polling in January 2024, all major party candidates continued to have negative favourability ratings. The net favourability rating of NPP/JVP candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayaka increased by 12 points to -10 whilst the favourability ratings of SJB candidate Sajith Premadasa and incumbent President Ranil Wickremesinghe each decreased by 9 points to -53 and -77 respectively.

March 2024

In IHP SLOTS polling in March 2024, net favourability rating of SJB leader Sajith Premadasa increased 30 points to -30 in March compared to the previous month while favourability ratings of NPP/JVP leader AK Dissanayake and Pres. Ranil Wickremasinghe remained relatively unchanged at -24 (-2) and -78 (+1) respectively.

Notes

References