Morocco’s Next World Cup Government Starts 101 Seats Short

Morocco’s Authenticity and Modernity Party took 97 of 395 seats in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, 101 short of the majority needed to govern alone. Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit reported the figures after a campaign fought over jobs, hospitals and the bill for the 2030 World Cup.

Turnout was 38.08 percent of 15.8 million registered voters, the second-lowest share since King Mohammed VI took the throne in 1999. The cabinet that finishes Morocco’s World Cup build will be a coalition drawn from that poll.

A 97-Seat Win Leaves PAM 101 Short

Laftit announced the Interior Ministry’s official seat tally late on September 23, and the ministry confirmed the same numbers as final on Friday. PAM rose from 87 seats in 2021. It still sits 101 seats below the 198 required for a majority in the chamber.

The National Rally of Independents, which led the outgoing cabinet, fell to 66 seats. The conservative nationalist Istiqlal Party took 65. The Justice and Development Party, a moderate Islamist force that held just 13 seats last time, recovered to 54. Fourteen parties in all won at least one seat, from 28 lists that put 7,277 candidates on the ballot, 2,659 of them women.

HOW THE CHAMBER SHIFTED

The four largest parties now hold 282 of 395 seats, so any working majority will be bargained among them and a handful of smaller groups. PAM was founded in 2008 by Fouad Ali El Himma, a longtime friend of the king, and has spent its life as a palace-aligned counterweight to the PJD.

Akhannouch’s Party Sheds More Than a Third of Its Seats

Aziz Akhannouch, the billionaire who has been head of government since October 2021, did not stand. He stepped down as RNI president after last year’s street unrest and handed the party to Mohamed Chouki, who on Thursday conceded the drop while saying the RNI still carried weight and would leave alliance talks to its own bodies.

The party that beat him was already inside his cabinet. PAM sat as the second force in the 2021 coalition and campaigned this time on a $37 billion plan promising 1 million jobs plus new money for health, schools, social protection and wages. During the race the two partners blamed each other for food-price failures, and PAM said it would not serve again under an RNI-led government.

That feud is now a math problem. Together, PAM, the RNI and Istiqlal still hold 228 seats, 30 more than a majority, the same three-party formula that governed for five years. Replaying it would ignore the campaign. Skipping the RNI means PAM has to find 101 votes among Istiqlal and the smaller secular parties, with the PJD already on the other side of the aisle.

Why Did Most Registered Voters Stay Home?

Turnout fell to 38.08 percent of 15.8 million registered voters, Laftit said, the weakest figure since the 37 percent recorded in 2007 and well below the 50.86 percent of 2021 and the 42.27 percent of 2016. Nearly 6 million people voted. About 62 percent of the roll did not.

The ministry set up 40,694 polling stations and accredited 3,006 observers, including 200 from abroad. The southern provinces voted in large numbers, as they usually do. Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra reached 77 percent, Dakhla-Oued Eddahab 61 percent and Guelmim-Oued Noun 53.48 percent. The national number was dragged down everywhere else.

WHO WAS ON THE ROLL

• National turnout: 38.08 percent, with nearly 6 million ballots from 15.8 million names.
• Young adults: The under-35 share of the electorate is only 18 percent, and the 18-to-24 group is 3 percent, even though people aged 15 to 29 are about a quarter of the population.
• The missing names: Roughly 2.2 million fewer voters are registered than in 2021, when local races were held on the same day.
• Youth jobless rate: Unemployment for ages 15 to 24 stands at 36 percent.

Last September, the loosely organised Gen Z 212 movement filled streets after eight women died following cesarean sections in Agadir. Protesters put hospitals and schools against stadiums, and three people were killed, Akhannouch said at the time. The king then told the cabinet to lift health and education spending in the 2026 budget by 18 percent, to 140 billion dirhams ($15 billion), and officials promised 8,000 health jobs, 19,000 education jobs and work on 90 hospitals. Of 3.3 billion dirhams ($350 million) pledged for hospital building and repairs, only the 2026 slice was locked in before the vote.

Stadium pride did not convert into ballots. The same grievances that put young people in the street in 2025, and that sent a deadly migrant rush at Spain’s Ceuta enclave in July, showed up as empty polling stations rather than a new majority.

Benkirane Brings the PJD Back From 13 Seats

The PJD governed for a decade after the 2011 constitution, peaked at 125 seats in 2016, then collapsed to 13 in 2021. Abdelilah Benkirane, the former prime minister, returned as leader and pulled the party back to 54 seats, strongest in the cities. He said after the vote that the PJD would stay in opposition.

A long rivalry with PAM makes a deal between them unlikely in any case. PAM was built to block the Islamists. Benkirane spent the campaign attacking that project. Mohammed Masbah, head of the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis, said the result showed a system “where Islamists can lose and win without affecting political stability.”

That stability has a price. The opposition now has a louder urban voice on living costs, jobs and the World Cup budget, and the governing parties have a thinner popular base than the 2021 coalition that held 270 seats among PAM, the RNI and Istiqlal alone.

The 2030 World Cup Now Depends on a Coalition

FIFA in December 2024 appointed Morocco, Portugal and Spain as hosts of the 2030 World Cup, with three centenary matches in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. Morocco plans six venues, including a new Hassan II stadium outside Casablanca designed for 115,000 people. The next head of government will oversee the last years of that build and the social spending the 2025 protests forced onto the books.

Two PAM names dominate the shortlist. Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri coordinates the party’s collegial leadership, serves as mayor of Marrakech, and holds the national planning, housing and urban-policy portfolio. If the king names her, she would be Morocco’s first woman head of government and the second in the Arab region after Tunisia’s Najla Bouden. Fouzi Lekjaa, the budget minister and president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, joined PAM on July 25 and is widely credited with the national team’s rise and with World Cup works. Putting him in the premiership would fold the tournament file into the same office that has to answer for hospitals and jobs.

FROM THE PROTESTS TO THE POLL

1. September 2025: Gen Z 212 protests begin after the Agadir maternity deaths, with chants against stadium spending.
2. October 2025: Three protesters are killed; the king orders an 18 percent rise in the health and education budget, to 140 billion dirhams ($15 billion).
3. July 25, 2026: Lekjaa joins PAM and later fronts its campaign.
4. July 2026: A deadly mass attempt to reach Ceuta revives the same grievance over work and public services.
5. September 23, 2026: Moroccans elect a new House of Representatives.
6. September 24, 2026: Laftit reads the preliminary results; El Mansouri opens coalition talks with no red lines.
7. September 25, 2026: The Interior Ministry confirms PAM on 97 seats, still 101 short of a majority.

King Mohammed VI keeps defence, religion and the main lines of foreign policy. The elected cabinet is judged on the rest, which now includes both the tournament and the protest file.

No Red Lines and Still No Prime Minister

Under Article 47 of Morocco’s constitution, the king appoints the head of government from the party that finishes first in the House of Representatives, and with a view to the results. He is not bound to pick the party’s public leader. El Mansouri, speaking in Rabat on Thursday with colleagues Mehdi Bensaid and Fatima Saadi, called that choice a prerogative that belongs to the king and said that if PAM is given the government, “it will be an honor for me.”

There is no party with which we refuse to sit around the same table. We believe in dialogue and consultation.

Fatima Ezzahra El Mansouri, PAM coordinator, Rabat press conference

She also said the party had turned the page on a bitter campaign. That line reopened a door PAM had closed on the RNI weeks earlier. Benkirane, for his part, had already ruled out joining a PAM-led cabinet. The first phone calls therefore run toward Istiqlal and the smaller parties that can push a PAM-led list over 198 without the Islamists.

Hospitals Versus Stadiums Goes to a Patchwork Cabinet

Whoever the king names will have to assemble votes, not inherit them. The paths that add up are few, and each one carries a different fight over money.

THE ROUTES TO 198 SEATS

• Replay 2021: PAM, the RNI and Istiqlal still total 228, enough on paper, if the food-price feud can be parked.
• Skip the RNI: PAM and Istiqlal start at 162. Adding the Popular Movement’s 29 and the USFP’s 26 reaches 217.
• Glue from the minors: The Party of Progress and Socialism on 19 or the Constitutional Union on 17 can replace a reluctant partner.
• Leave the PJD out: Benkirane has already chosen opposition, so the 54 Islamist seats are a scrutiny bloc, not a spare majority.

PAM’s platform put $37 billion against 1 million jobs. The palace has already ordered more money into clinics and classrooms. The tournament still needs venues, rail and hotel rooms. Those three bills now sit on a cabinet that won the most seats in the Morocco parliamentary election and still has to borrow a majority, after most registered voters stayed home.

The king has not named a head of government. Until he does, the 97-seat winner is only first in line for a job that runs through 2030.