In Rabat–Ocean, being a well-known candidate is not enough to become an MP. The recent electoral history of the constituency tells a different story: faces change, parties rise and fall, and the four available seats can be enough to redraw the political map from one election to the next.
That is what gives the September 23 contest a particular dimension. The constituency that was one of the Justice and Development Party’s electoral strongholds in 2016 became, five years later, one of the RNI’s main areas of advance. The 2024 by-election then confirmed the same party’s presence, but under a completely different electoral climate.
In 2016, the PJD came first with 29,531 votes and won two seats. The Authenticity and Modernity Party took one, while the Federation of the Democratic Left secured the fourth. The National Rally of Independents, meanwhile, remained outside the seats with 3,762 votes.
Five years later, almost nothing remained of that configuration.
In the September 8, 2021 election, the RNI came first with 15,888 votes, followed by the PAM with 7,076, the Istiqlal Party with 4,545 and the Popular Movement with 4,299. Those four parties took the four seats.
The PJD, which had won two seats in 2016, fell to 4,028 votes and disappeared from the constituency’s parliamentary representation. The Federation of the Democratic Left also lost its seat, its vote tally falling from 8,048 to 2,650.
The change was therefore more than a simple reshuffling of the rankings. In five years, the PJD had lost more than 25,000 votes, while the RNI had gained more than 12,000, moving from fourth place to first.
The PAM, meanwhile, retained a seat despite a significant decline in its vote total, while Istiqlal and the Popular Movement entered the ranks of the winners.
That may be one of the clearest features of Ocean’s recent electoral history: no seat appears to be permanently secured.
The 2024 by-election added another chapter. The RNI seat previously held by Abderrahim Wasslem became vacant, and the September 12 vote allowed the party to retain it through Saad Benmbarek, who won 46.42 percent of the vote, ahead of the candidate of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces with 29.67 percent, the PJD with 15.49 percent and the Federation of the Democratic Left with 8.42 percent.
But those percentages need to be read carefully.
Out of 179,036 registered voters, only 7,524 took part in the election, a turnout of 6.66 percent. Valid votes totaled just 6,307, compared with 1,217 invalid ballots.
The 46.42 percent obtained by the winner therefore cannot simply be read as an expression of electoral strength representing most of the constituency’s electorate. It was a by-election marked by extremely low participation. It is an indicator, but not a reliable snapshot of what a general legislative election might look like.
That is where the 2026 contest really begins.
The names chosen by the parties make Ocean one of the most closely watched constituencies in Rabat. The PAM is entering the race with Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, who already won a seat in the constituency in 2021. The PJD is putting forward Mustapha El Khalfi, a former minister and former government spokesman. The USFP has chosen Abdelkrim Benatiq, the former minister in charge of Moroccans living abroad.
The RNI is fielding Taha El Jemani, while Istiqlal has renewed its confidence in Abdelilah El Bouzidi, who won the constituency in 2021. The Popular Movement is putting forward Nabil Dakhch. The Party of Progress and Socialism has chosen Rachid Sassi, while the Federation of the Democratic Left has settled on Omar Mahmoud Benjelloun, according to the candidacies announced so far.
These names bring together different government, party and parliamentary careers. But putting so many established figures into the same constituency does not necessarily make the outcome easier to read. It may even make it more complicated.
Only four seats are available, while more lists and candidates are competing for them. The difference between winning a seat and remaining outside Parliament may therefore be narrow. The results of 2016 and 2021 also show that the number of votes required to secure a seat is not fixed, and that a party’s national political weight does not automatically translate into the same strength within the constituency.
This is what makes the electoral arithmetic in Ocean particularly difficult.
Local legislative elections are based on proportional representation under the largest remainder system, with the electoral quotient calculated on the basis of the number of registered voters and the number of seats allocated to the constituency. A list therefore does not win simply because it finishes ahead of its rivals; the way the remaining votes are distributed also matters in determining the final allocation of seats.
The 2021 result cannot therefore simply be reproduced, just as the 2016 configuration cannot be assumed to be returning.
The PJD knows this better than most. It was the leading force in 2016, only to lose all its seats five years later. It then returned to the competition in the 2024 by-election, securing 15.49 percent of the valid vote. The RNI, for its part, moved from outside the seats in 2016 to first place in 2021, before retaining its seat in the by-election with a new candidate.
But between those electoral sequences, something else changed, perhaps more important than the names themselves: the relationship between voters and the ballot box.
The extremely low turnout in the by-election does not, of course, mean that the 2026 general election will see the same level of abstention. It is a national legislative election, with a different political character, scheduled for September 23, while the official campaign is due to begin on September 10.
But the by-election did reveal the existence of a large body of registered voters who do not automatically become active voters when election day arrives.
That is where the political heavyweights face a test that their résumés alone cannot settle.
A former minister needs voters to turn out. So does a former MP. The party that topped the previous election needs to preserve its base or compensate for lost votes. And if abstention remains high, the ability of a local organisation to reach voters and mobilise them on election day may weigh more heavily than the candidate’s public profile.
There is not yet enough evidence to say which party would benefit from that situation. Nor is there enough basis to turn the 2024 by-election into a miniature model of the coming general election.
One thing, however, is clear: Ocean enters the 2026 race with a particularly volatile electoral memory. Two seats for the PJD in 2016, none in 2021; the rise of the RNI from outside the seats to first place; the arrival of Istiqlal and the Popular Movement among the winners; and then the RNI’s retention of its seat in a by-election with a new candidate.
In that context, the label “killing field” refers to more than a confrontation between well-known names.
Four seats will ultimately go to four lists, but winning them will depend first on voters whose willingness to return to the ballot box in greater numbers than in 2024 remains uncertain. If turnout rises, the balance of power could change significantly. If abstention remains high, local mobilisation may weigh more heavily on the result.
In Ocean, then, the real contest does not begin with the announcement of the candidates, nor can it be measured by their public profiles alone. It begins when a name becomes a presence in the neighbourhoods, that presence becomes a relationship of trust, and that trust turns into a vote.
Only on the night of September 23 will it become clear which of these names were actually “heavyweights” at the ballot box.
