Kazakhstan's new ruling party projected to win elections
Kazakhstan's newly formed Adilet Party is projected to win a commanding majority in the country's first parliamentary election under a new Constitution, with exit polls showing it taking more than 70% of the vote and around 109 of 145 seats in the new unicameral Kurultai.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Exit polls in Kazakhstan's first Kurultai election project the Adilet Party, which absorbed the long-dominant Amanat party earlier this year, to win roughly 72% of the vote and a dominant majority of seats. Five parties are expected to clear the 5% threshold in the new unicameral legislature introduced under Kazakhstan's revised Constitution.
Kazakhstan had an election for a brand-new parliament called the Kurultai. A new political party called Adilet won by a huge margin, getting more than 70 out of every 100 votes, like winning a school election by a landslide. The big change is that Kazakhstan used to have two houses of parliament like some countries do, but now it just has one, and the new party that absorbed the old ruling team will run it.
Analysis
The Adilet Party's 72-percent projection
The Adilet Party, formally established in April, has been projected by three separate exit polls to capture between 70.7% and 72.3% of the vote in Kazakhstan's inaugural Kurultai election. That range translates into roughly 109 of the 145 seats in the new unicameral chamber, a commanding majority that effectively mirrors the political dominance Amanat held for nearly three decades. Adilet's predecessor Amanat, formerly known as Nur Otan, was built around the 1999 campaign infrastructure that supported ex-President Nursultan Nazarbayev. The merger means that despite the rebranding, the country's most consequential political vehicle retains deep institutional roots while presenting a refreshed face aligned with President Tokayev's constitutional agenda.
The party's breadth was on display during the campaign: it nominated 186 candidates, the largest slate of any contender, and its chair Aibek Dadebay toured all regions in the run-up to voting day. The party's platform explicitly backs the new Constitution, a positioning that aligned it directly with Tokayev's reformist messaging and the institutional reset that has reordered Kazakhstan's power structures since the 2022 unrest.
The 145-member Kurultai replaces a bicameral Parliament
For the first time, Kazakh voters selected lawmakers for the single-chamber Kurultai, a body created under the new Constitution to replace the bicameral Parliament. Seven parties fielded 545 candidates in total, and a 5% threshold determined which parties would clear the bar for representation. Independent candidacies, permitted under the old system, were excluded from this cycle; all seats were contested through party lists. The result is a more centralized legislative architecture designed, according to the government's framing, to streamline lawmaking under the Tokayev presidency.
Turnout reached 74.19%, with 9.35 million voters casting ballots according to preliminary Central Election Commission figures. The strong participation rate, in a system without independent candidates, suggests the new format did not dampen engagement. Five parties are projected to enter the chamber: Adilet, Auyl (6.2%, around 12 seats), Respublica (5.2%, 9 seats), the Nationwide Social Democratic Party (5%, 8 seats) and Ak Zhol (5.1%, 7 seats). The People's Party of Kazakhstan and the green-focused Baitaq party fell below the threshold, ending their parliamentary prospects for this cycle.
Indira Aubakirova's reading of the smaller parties
Indira Aubakirova, head of the Institute of Legislation and Legal Information, offered one of the more granular post-vote analyses, noting that the People's Party of Kazakhstan's roughly 3% showing reflected generational turnover in Kazakh politics. A party historically rooted in social-policy and worker-protection issues, the People's Party has struggled to translate its older base into younger voters, a vulnerability that Aubakirova attributed both to demographic shifts and to the entry of a new cohort of voters whose priorities have moved on. Her framing underscores that even within a heavily managed electoral environment, generational churn is producing measurable pressure on legacy parties.
Aubakirova also singled out the strong performance of Respublica, a party established only in January 2023 that focused on entrepreneurship and economic development. Despite Ak Zhol's longer pedigree (founded in 2002 and focused on private business and parliamentary strengthening), Respublica ran what Aubakirova called a more competent campaign, narrowly outperforming it in the exit polls. The result suggests that in Kazakhstan's reshaped political marketplace, newer entrants with sharper economic messaging can outflank older parties even when those parties have deeper institutional histories.
President Tokayev used election day to signal another institutional change: the appointment of Kazakhstan's first vice president, a position created under the same new Constitution that produced the Kurultai. Speaking to journalists at a polling station, Tokayev said the name would be officially announced within seven days, setting up another consequential personnel decision in the early life of the new constitutional order.
Key points
- Kazakhstan's newly formed Adilet Party is projected to win 70.7-72.3% of the vote and roughly 109 of 145 seats in the new Kurultai.
- This was Kazakhstan's first parliamentary election under a new Constitution that replaced the bicameral Parliament with a single-chamber legislature.
- Five parties are projected to clear the 5% threshold: Adilet, Auyl, Respublica, Ak Zhol and the Nationwide Social Democratic Party.
- Adilet absorbed Amanat, the long-dominant party formerly known as Nur Otan, ahead of the vote; Amanat had ruled Kazakhstan for nearly 30 years.
- Voter turnout reached 74.19%, with 9.35 million ballots cast, and President Tokayev announced he would name Kazakhstan's first vice president within seven days.
A decisive Adilet majority could allow the Tokayev administration to move quickly on constitutional implementation, including codifying the new vice presidency and clarifying the Kurultai's powers relative to the presidency. Continuity at the top also reassures foreign investors and European partners with stakes in the Caspian energy corridor and trans-Caspian transport routes.
A single party holding more than 70% of seats leaves little room for legislative opposition, which could limit scrutiny of government decisions and entrench elite capture under the new constitutional framework. The exclusion of independent candidates also narrows the channel through which dissenting voices can enter the chamber.