Snap parliamentary elections were held in Armenia on 20 June 2021. The elections had initially been scheduled for 9 December 2023, but were called earlier due to a political crisis following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War and an alleged attempted coup in February 2021.
Nikol Pashinyan, who had served as Prime Minister since 2018, resigned in April 2021 and subsequently the seventh National Assembly was dissolved on 10 May. Pashinyan continued to serve as acting prime minister until the elections were held. Following the election, Pashinyan's Civil Contract party received 54% of the vote and won 71 seats, a majority in the 107-seat parliament. The opposition Armenia Alliance, finished second with 29 seats, while the I Have Honor Alliance won 7 seats. No other party or alliance surpassed the electoral threshold required to win a seat. The opposition claimed there had been electoral fraud during the elections, while the OSCE assessed the election as meeting international standards and described it as; "marred by increasingly inflammatory rhetoric" but was "positive overall."
Background
After six weeks of war with Azerbaijan, on 9 November 2020 prime minister Nikol Pashinyan, president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Russian president Vladimir Putin reached and signed a ceasefire agreement. Following the announcement of this deal, violent protests erupted in Yerevan. The National Assembly was stormed and its speaker Ararat Mirzoyan was beaten by an angry mob.
Pashinyan faced continuous calls for his resignation and mass rallies calling for him to step down. On 25 February 2021, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Onik Gasparyan and more than 40 other top-ranking generals demanded Pashinyan's resignation, which Pashinyan described as a coup attempt, causing a political crisis that ended with Gasparyan's dismissal.
On 25 April 2021, Pashinyan announced his formal resignation, prompting the dissolution of the National Assembly and the call for snap elections on 20 June of that year.
Electoral system
The members of the unicameral National Assembly are elected by party-list proportional representation. The number of seats is at least 101, and rises when allocation of additional seats is required. Seats are allocated using the d'Hondt method with an election threshold of 5% for parties and 7% for multi-party alliances. However, a minimum of three political groups will enter parliament, regardless of the performance of the third-best performing party or alliance.
Seats are allocated to parties using their national share of the vote. Four seats are reserved for national minorities (Assyrians, Kurds, Russians and Yazidis), with parties having separate lists for the four groups. A gender quota requires any top section of a party list to include at least 33% candidates of each gender.
If a party receives a majority of the vote but wins less than 54% of the seats, they will be awarded additional seats to give them 54% of the total. If one party wins over two-thirds of the seats, the losing parties which made it over the threshold will be given extra seats reducing the share of seats of the winning party to two-thirds. If a government is not formed within six days of the preliminary results being released, a run-off round between the top two parties must be held on the 28th day. The party that wins the run-off will be given the additional seats required for a 54% majority, with all seats allocated in the first round preserved.
COVID-19 pandemic
Facing the COVID-19 pandemic in Armenia, the government has implemented inconsistent health measures. The Electoral Code does not provide for mail-in voting or early voting.
Schedule
Participating parties and alliances were required to submit applications with all supporting documentation by 18:00 on 26 May. The electoral lists of the political parties and alliances of parties were registered by 31 May.
The official election campaign took place from 7 to 18 June. Voting took place on 20 June from 8am to 8pm.
Participating political forces
Four alliances and 23 parties submitted documents to Armenia's Central Electoral Commission (CEC) in order to register for the elections. This is a significant increase in the number of parties competing, as only nine parties and two alliances had competed in the parliamentary elections held two years earlier. Several of the parties and all of the alliances were established in 2020 or 2021, following Armenia's defeat in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. In total, four alliances and 23 parties participated in the election.