By official vote counts, Kazakhstan's incumbent President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was the clear winner in Sunday’s snap elections, earning 81.3 percent of the vote, according to the country’s Central Election Commission.
Nurlan Abdirov, the head of the electoral authority, said that almost 70 percent of voters, or about 8.3 million people, took part in the election. 6.5 million of them reportedly voted for Tokayev, while each of the other candidates garnered about 2–3 percent of the remaining votes.
According to the Open Society Institute, 5.2 percent of voters chose to vote against all of the candidates running.
In January 2022, protests that began in response to high gas prices grew into mass unrest that swept Kazakhstan. The uprising, sometimes referred to as "Bloody January," led to hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests.
In March, President Tokayev announced a series of reforms that included multiple constitutional amendments. The measures, including one that limits presidents to a single seven-year term, were approved by voters in June. In September, Tokayev announced that snap elections would be held, citing the need for a “new mandate of trust from the people” so that “comprehensive reforms” could be conducted.
