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The 2018 Zimbabwean presidential election was the sixth presidential election held in Zimbabwe. It was held shortly after the 2017 coup d'état, which resulted in President Robert Mugabe's ouster from power after nearly 40 years.

Emmerson Mnangagwa, who succeeded Mugabe as President following the coup, ran as ZANU–PF's candidate, seeking his first full term in office. The presumptive Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, died in February 2018, five months before the election. His successor Nelson Chamisa ran as the candidate of the MDC Alliance, a coalition made up of the MDC–T and six other parties. Both candidates campaigned on a message of change, and promised to address the country's struggling economic situation.

In an election that was, in contrast with previous elections, mostly peaceful, Mnangagwa won with 50.8% of the vote, narrowly exceeding the threshold needed to avoid a runoff election, and won six of the country's ten provinces. Chamisa received 44.3% of the vote and won the remaining four provinces, including the two metropolitan provinces, Harare and Bulawayo. Chamisa and the MDC Alliance disputed the results, accusing ZANU–PF of rigging the election. The Supreme Court upheld the results, and Mnangagwa was sworn in as President on 26 August 2018.

Background
From independence in 1980 until less than a year before the 2018 election, Robert Mugabe was the leader of Zimbabwe, first as Prime Minister and then as President. As Mugabe aged, internal tensions within ZANU–PF, the ruling party, grew as leading politicians jockeyed for influence, hoping to succeed him. After he was named Vice-President in 2014, Emmerson Mnangagwa was widely seen as Mugabe's favored successor. Mnangagwa's ascendancy was opposed by First Lady Grace Mugabe, a relative political newcomer who herself wished to succeed her husband as President. In the intraparty conflict that ensued, ZANU–PF was largely split between two factions, the Generation 40 or G40, led by Grace Mugabe, and the Lacoste faction, which supported Mnangagwa.

The power struggle within ZANU–PF reached a climax on 6 November 2017, when Mnangagwa was removed as Vice-President by President Mugabe, who accused him of disloyalty and of plotting against the government. This left Grace Mugabe, who had previously called for Mugabe to replace Mnangagwa as Vice-President, as the most likely contender succeed her husband as President. After his dismissal, Mnangagwa fled the country, while a number of his leading political allies in Zimbabwe were targeted by members of the G40 faction and purged from the government.

A week after Mnangagwa's dismissal, on 14 November 2017, elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) began seizing control of key areas of the capital, Harare, and placed President Mugabe under house arrest. Over the next several days, a number of government ministers and senior G40 allies were arrested by the military. On 19 November 2018, ZANU–PF sacked Mugabe as party leader, replacing him with Mnangagwa, and demanded Mugabe resign as President by noon the next day. When Mugabe did not resign by the deadline, a joint session of both the House of Assembly and the Senate convened on 21 November to open impeachment proceedings. While the joint session was meeting, Mugabe sent a letter to Parliament resigning the presidency. ZANU–PF nominated Mnangagwa to succeed him, and he was sworn in as President three days later.

Candidates
Shortly after he became President, Mnangagwa was chosen as ZANU–PF's candidate for president in the upcoming election. President Mugabe had previously announced in 2015 that he would run for another term in 2018, and was adopted as ZANU–PF's candidate, despite the fact that he would be 94 at the time of the election. On 29 July 2018, Mugabe announced that he would not support Mnangagwa or ZANU–PF in the election. In August 2017, Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC–T), joined six smaller parties to create the MDC Alliance to contest the upcoming elections. Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of both the MDC–T and MDC Alliance, was expected to be the coalition's presidential candidate in 2018. Tsvangirai had run against Mugabe in the last three presidential elections. However, Tsvangirai died of colon cancer on 14 February 2018. A week earlier, it had been announced that he was critically ill, and a party source said "we should brace for the worst". Tsvangirai's death was considered a serious blow to the MDC–T, as he was expected to be a strong contender in the upcoming election, the first since the end of Mugabe's rule.

As Tsvangirai's illness became known, internal divisions had formed within the MDC–T as the party's three vice-presidents, Nelson Chamisa, Thokozani Khuphe, and Elias Mudzuri vied to succeed him. After his death, the MDC–T national council selected Chamisa to succeed him as the party leader. As such, Chamisa became the presidential candidate of the MDC Alliance. In response, Khuphe, who thought she should have been chosen, led a breakaway faction of the MDC–T and announced her candidacy for President.

In total, 23 presidential candidates stood for election, the most in Zimbabwe's history. Joice Mujuru, who served as Vice-President before her dismissal in 2014, ran as the candidate of the People's Rainbow Coalition. The Coalition of Democrats, an alliance of nine political parties, nominated the Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe, Elton Mangoma, to be their presidential candidate. Other minor candidates included Joseph Makamba Busha of the FreeZim Congress, Nkosana Moyo of the Alliance for People's Agenda, Evaristo Chikanga of Rebuild Zimbabwe, Hlabangana Kwanele of the Republican Party, William Mugadza of the Bethel Christian Party, and independent Bryn Muteki, a musician.

Results
On 3 August 2018, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced the results on the presidential election. ZEC chairperson Priscilla Chigumba said that voter turnout had been high. While some media outlets reported that turnout was 70 percent, a database published by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems lists it at 86.45 percent. In total, over 4.75 million Zimbabweans cast their votes, out of 5.5 million registered voters and an estimated population of 14.5 million. The ZEC announced that Mnangagwa won 2,460,463 votes, a 50.8 percent majority. Chamisa received 2,147,436 votes, or 44.3 percent. Khuphe, the breakaway MDC–T candidate, earned 0.9 percent of the vote, and no other minor candidate received more than 0.4 percent of the vote. Mnangagwa's slim majority of the popular vote prevented a runoff election, which must occur if no candidate receives more than a plurality.

Mnangagwa won 46 of Zimbabwe's 59 districts, and Chamisa won the remaining 13. Mnangagwa won six of the country's ten provinces, namely, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East, Mashonaland West, Masvingo, Matabeleland South, and his home province, Midlands. Chamisa won four provinces: Matabeleland North, Manicaland, and the country's two metropolitan provinces, Harare and Bulawayo.