Sri Lanka 2010: Final Results

Sri Lanka voted on April 8 to renew all 225 seats in the Sri Lankan Parliament, but two districts in Kandy and Trincomalee District held a re-vote on April 20. As a result of the re-vote, Kandy’s seat 12 district seats and Trincomalee’s 4 district seats were allocated as well as 29 top-up national seats elected by proportional representation.

I posted the preliminary results earlier here, in a post which also includes information on the political coalitions. As a reminder, before the re-vote, the UPFA stood at 117 seats against 46 seats for the UNF, 12 seats for the TNA and 5 seats for the DNA.

UPFA 60.33% (+14.73%) winning 144 seats (+39) [127 district, 17 national]
UNF 29.34% (-8.49%) winning 60 seats (-22) [51 district, 9 national]
TNA 2.90% (-3.94%) winning 14 seats (-8) [13 district, 1 national]
DNA 5.49% winning 7 seats (+7) [5 district, 2 national]

The Economist‘s projection of 142 seats overall for the UPFA was close to the final tally of 144 seats. The party falls short of the 150 seats two-thirds majority which would allow it to change the constitution, but as said previously, it is likely that opportunistic opposition MPs will be more than happy to join the government’s ranks for the advantages and spoils of power. The opposition MPs most likely to defect are probably those members of small parties allied with the UNF or the Sinhalese nationalist-communist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which was allied with the DNA this time but was a member of the UPFA’s 2004 coalition.