Autonomous Region of Bougainville General Election, 4/5 September 2025

Autonomous Region of Bougainville (ARB) within the Independent State of Papua New Guinea 

Floods 

On 5 September 2025 Bougainville was exposed to over 30 mm of precipitation (Meteoblue n.d.) and went on to experience major mainland flooding from 9 September (RNZ 2025a) with heavy downpour and rough seas over several days (Fennell 2025).  

Bougainville is an autonomous region located in the Solomon Islands archipelago, geographically close to the Solomon Islands. Lying within the Pacific Ring of Fire, it is prone to natural hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, floods and tsunamis. Climate change has exacerbated these vulnerabilities through increased heatwaves, rainfall variability and sea-level rise (Solomon Islands 2025).  

Impact on the electoral process 

The Bougainville Electoral Commissioner announced that the polling period was to start on 2 September 2025 with the one-day polling on the 4 September. Nevertheless, polling for the General elections was pushed to Friday, 5 September 2025, to allow time to dispatch ballot papers. Vote counting and tabulation, initially scheduled for 9—21 September (OBEC n.d.), experienced delays due to major flooding, with ballot boxes from five provinces arriving late to regional centres (RNZ 2025a; RNZ 2025b; IFES n.d.). The Electoral Commissioner stated that all major transport methods were being used to deliver the ballots to Buka, the region’s capital: boat, vehicle and aircraft (Fennell 2025). Counting did not start until 12 September, which pushed announcement of the final result back to 6 October (Rovoi 2025a; Wasuka 2025). 

According to the Bougainville Elections Act 2007 (sections 146 and 147) the Bougainville Electoral Commissioner has the authority to extend deadlines when meeting any difficulty which might otherwise interfere with the due course of election (ARB 2007). 

The Final Electoral Roll included 238,625 registered voters, 51 per cent of whom were men and 49 per cent women (ARB 2025). Former Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) commander and incumbent President Ishmael Toroama was re-elected with more than 90,000 votes (Staunton 2025), compared with just 17,000 votes for his closest rival (Rovoi 2025b).