Myanmar’s Wartime Polls: Managing Expectations

Myanmar’s junta is planning wartime elections in December 2025 and January 2026. Externally and internally, perspectives on the polls vary dramatically. The difference in views are facilitated by numerous ambiguities, including in the design and likely outcomes of the polls. Well-established benchmarks from political science help clarify the limits of the exercise, what to expect if it proceeds, and implications for stakeholders. In short, the literature shows, among other things, that the elected parliament in Myanmar would fundamentally lack legitimacy and a national mandate.

China and Thailand see the polls as a potential step towards normalising engagement; domestically, the military and aligned parties seek legitimation of their rule, while a small number of pro-democracy parties hope that dispersing power — at least on paper — provides a pathway out of political deadlock and instability. Most international and domestic actors, however, remain deeply critical.

Myanmar’s polls would not be “just another” flawed election, as proponents sometimes imply. While other elections in Southeast Asia have clear shortcomings, Myanmar’s would be categorically different. Robert Dahl’s work on polyarchy — essentially, a real-world form of democracy marked by effective contestation and accountability — offers a clear reference point: the region’s hybrid systems typically fall short on some criteria, but Myanmar’s planned elections comprehensively fail all of them in severe and systematic ways. As illustrated below, indicators from the widely used Electoral Integrity Project point the same way across eleven domains critical to electoral quality, including such areas as electoral laws, boundaries, voter and party registration, and campaign media.

Several points substantiate the outlier status of Myanmar’s polls. First, nearly all meaningful challengers to the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) — including the National League for Democracy (NLD), winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections by landslides — have been dissolved. The remaining 60 registered parties secured only about 2 per cent of the popular vote and 12 of the 498 civilian seats in the 2020 election. Second, the junta currently controls less than half of the country’s territory; voting will only occur in areas it controls, leaving large segments of the electorate excluded. Most likely, the junta will blame the resistance for “obstructing democracy” in remaining areas. Third, tens of thousands of political prisoners — including journalists and civic leaders — underscore the severe constraints on organisation and expression. Most significant, however, is Myanmar’s ongoing civil war. It has caused thousands of civilian deaths, many more combat casualties and led to millions of internally displaced persons since 2021. There is no regional analogue to these conditions.

From the perspective of established frameworks, the consequences are clear. Given the dissolution of key parties, large portions of the country excluded from voting, and documented scepticism among remaining segments of the electorate, polling results cannot credibly claim to represent the popular will. As such, the polls lack the fundamental mechanisms necessary to confer legitimacy on a subsequent government.

Beyond that, the polls are likely to exacerbate instability in the short term. Elections are rarely held amid active conflict. In the few wartime cases studied — including El Salvador (1982), Angola (1992), Iraq (2005), and Syria (2014 and 2021) — they neither ended violence nor produced cross-factional legitimacy, but instead deepened wartime cleavages. There is little basis to expect a different outcome in Myanmar.

The polls also risk deepening fragmentation. The country is already effectively divided between a contested centre (largely coinciding with the Bamar-majority regions) and increasingly autonomous “statelets” around the periphery, where de facto authorities are institutionalising elements of self-rule. Polling would be limited primarily to the centre, leaving a subsequent parliament heavily skewed towards military-aligned MPs and with minimal representation from the periphery. This would further formalise the division of Myanmar into multiple polities. If a centre-dominated parliament nonetheless tried to claim comprehensive national authority, many in the periphery would read it as further evidence of political exclusion, potentially pushing a future shared political framework beyond reach. 

Given the dissolution of key parties, large portions of the country excluded from voting, and documented scepticism among remaining segments of the electorate, polling results cannot credibly claim to represent the popular will.

Three practical points emerge from these observations.

First, it is unsurprising that proponents of Myanmar’s polls implicitly reference regional elections in their bid to build confidence. Despite their significant flaws, recent polls in Thailand and the Philippines provided enough legitimacy and direction to at least temporarily overcome looming political crises. The evidence above, however, should dispel that line of comparisons. Myanmar’s polls are categorically different from regional counterparts in the breadth and degree of their flaws, making regional cases inappropriate guides to post-election pathways in Myanmar.

Second, most stakeholders in Myanmar share the unambiguous view of political science on the junta’s plans: the polls fall so far short of basic requirements that they cannot confer a subsequent parliament with legitimacy or a national mandate. Rather than trying to persuade sceptics of some alternative reality, its domestic proponents would strengthen their case by openly acknowledging that as their starting point, and setting out a plausible roadmap for how the polls could nonetheless bring about a constructive end to the stalemate. Put plainly, the case should rest on treating the polls — and any subsequent parliament — as a narrow, instrumental step, with no claim to represent the country, hold a national mandate, or approximate a “normal” government. The claim of anything more lacks credibility, given the polls’ incontrovertible shortcomings, and will not persuade sceptics.

Third, opponents of the polls face a parallel dilemma. With few exceptions, their strategies remain premised on comprehensively removing the military as a political actor. Understandable as that position is, there is a strong possibility, bolstered by China’s more interventionist approach to the civil war, that a decisive victory over the military will not materialise. In that eventuality, something else must shift the stalemate. If not an election, then what?

Ultimately, the polls appear likely to proceed. In that case, the fact that they are illegitimate by reasonable standards matters less than how actors approach them. Those discussions will be more constructive if they proceed from three basic truths: the polls cannot be expected to confer representative authority; they are likely to increase violence and fragmentation, at least in the short term; and some version of an election remains one of the few viable options in an otherwise stalemated and costly conflict.  

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