General Elections 1 December 2025

On 1 December 2025, Saint Lucia held snap elections to elect all 17 members of the House of Assembly, following an announcement by Prime Minister Phillip J. Pierre on November 9, 2025. Saint Lucia has a bicameral House of Parliament comprised of the House of Assembly and the Senate. The House of Assembly members are elected for 5-year terms via a first-past-the-post system from single-seat constituencies. The 11 members of the Senate are appointed by the Governor General, also for five years (IFES, 2025). Elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission, who is responsible for voter registration and election administration, assisted by the Chief of Elections Officer (International IDEA, 2021). 

The CARICOM and OAS observer missions reported that the campaign period and election day were generally orderly and peaceful, with no reported incidents of election-related violence (CARICOM, 2025; OAS, 2025). The OAS Observer Mission also noted that the two major political parties and several independent candidates signed a Joint Agreement and Declaration on Political Conduct, which contributed to a more civil and constructive electoral environment. However, media outlets reported a somewhat hostile campaign environment marked by personal attacks and accusations, many of them gendered or racist. According to one outlet, ‘words like “corruption”, “criminal”, and “unfit for office” echoed across platforms’, and at least two pro-UWP campaign songs referred to Prime Minister Philip J Pierre as “autistic” and “retarded”, which sparked outrage (Nelson, 2025). 

The OAS EOM further noted that the political finance framework remains entirely unregulated, which risks jeopardizing transparency and equitable competition among candidates, and that the absence of spending limits and public funding mechanisms contribute to structural disadvantages for certain political actors, such as women, independent candidates, and new or smaller parties in accessing the resources needed to compete on equal terms. Additionally, concerns were expressed regarding the potential mobilization of significant sums from foreign sources in campaign activities, although no evidence was presented for this (OAS, 2025). There was one incident where a candidate was accused of vote-buying, which led to police seizure of a large sum of cash the candidate was carrying on election day. The seizure was later confirmed by the candidate, but he denied any attempts to vote buying (St. Rose, 2025b).

One notable issue is that, despite efforts to update and cleanse the electoral registry, it did appear to be inflated, given that a total of 179,154 electors were registered to vote in a country with an estimated population of 180,149 people. A part of the explanation for this may be that the Electoral Department does not have access to the Civil Status Registry’s digital system where vital voter information is recorded (OAS, 2025).

Another significant issue was that the electronic voter verifications system at times was non-functional, preventing poll workers from accessing the voter verification site and requiring reversion to manual verification. The electronic results transmission system also presented minor issues as it did not work as accurately or quickly as anticipated and, in some cases, caused the results to bypass the required Returning Officer verification (OAS, 2025).

At polling stations, there were some issues with voters not appearing on the voter list at their designated polling station and uncertainty about which polling station corresponded to them. Some accessibility issues were also reported due to polling stations being located on upper floors, posing difficulties for voters with mobility challenges (CARICOM, 2025; OAS, 2025). 

The OAS EOM also raised some concerns regarding the independence of the Electoral Commission, noting that even though it did in practice operate independently and without interference, there were still areas of improvement. Some concerns were also noted regarding political party registration due to the lack of a comprehensive framework (OAS, 2025).

Women constituted most election administrators and displayed ‘extremely high levels of political participation as voters, poll workers, and volunteers’ (OAS, 2025, p. 15). Still, women remain significantly underrepresented as political candidates, and only 8 out of 43 registered candidates were female (OAS, 2025). Women continue to face barriers to their political participation and are often ‘delegitimized and critiqued if they are single, childless, divorced or do not fit the somatic norm image of beauty’ (Augustin-Joseph, 2025), reflecting deeply entrenched traditional gender stereotypes (OAS, 2025). Throughout the campaign, female candidates reported becoming frequent targets of political ridicule in media, verbal attacks from male opponents, and even humiliation and insults from within their own parties (St. Rose, 2025a).

The election resulted in a decisive win for the St. Lucia Labour Party (SLP) led by Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre, gaining 14 of the 17 seats in the House of Assembly and thus securing a second consecutive term. The opposition United Workers Party (UWP) won one seat, while the two remaining seats went to independent candidates (Johnson, 2025; Davis, 2025). Voter turnout was 48.5%, down from 51.08% in 2021 (International IDEA, n.d.).