Large Majority Of Africans Support Presidential Term Limits
Despite increasing attacks from African leaders seeking to extend their tenure, presidential term limits enjoy the solid backing of a large majority of African citizens, a new Afrobarometer analysis shows.
Based on survey responses of more than 51,600 citizens in 34 countries, support for limiting presidential mandates to a maximum of two is the majority view in every country but one (Algeria).
In observance of Africa Day (25 May), this Afrobarometer analysis highlights the views of ordinary Africans, whose views are often ignored in the processes through which governance issues such as presidential term limits are debated and decided. Detailed results of the analysis are provided in Afrobarometer Dispatch No. 30, available at www.afrobarometer.org
Key findings
In 34 African countries, about three-fourths of citizens favour limiting presidential mandates to two terms (Figure 1).
Support for term limits has been consistently high over time and is the majority view even in countries that have never had term limits or have removed term limits from their constitutions.
More-educated citizens tend to express greater support for term limits (Figure 2), as do citizens with greater exposure to the news media.
Afrobarometer
Afrobarometer is a pan-African, non-partisan research organisation that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions, and related issues across more than 30 countries in Africa.
Five rounds of surveys were conducted between 1999 and 2013, and Round 6 surveys are currently under way (2014-2015).
Afrobarometer conducts face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent’s choice with nationally representative samples of between 1,200 and 2,400 respondents. Samples of this size yield country-level results with a margin of error of between +/-3% (for n=1,200) and +/-2% (for n=2,400) at a 95% confidence level.
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