Cambodian general election, 2003

← 1998

27 July 2003

2008 →

All 123 seats to the National Assembly
62 seats needed for a majority

Registered

6,341,834

Turnout

5,168,837 (81.5%)

12.2%

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Hun Sen	Norodom Ranariddh	Sam Rainsy
Party	CPP	FUNCINPEC	SRP
Leader since	14 January 1985	February 1992	June 1995
Leader's seat	Kandal	Kampong Cham	Kampong Cham
Last election	64 seats, 41.4%	43 seats, 31.7%	15 seats, 14.3%
Seats before	64	43	15
Seats won	73	26	24
Seat change	9	17	9
Popular vote	2,447,259	1,072,313	1,130,423
Percentage	47.3%	20.8%	21.9%
Swing	5.9%	10.9%	7.6%

Prime Minister before election

Hun Sen
CPP

Elected Prime Minister

Hun Sen
CPP

General elections were held in Cambodia on 27 July 2003 to elect members of the National Assembly. The election was won by the incumbent Prime Minister Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party, who claimed a majority of 73 seats in the 123-seat parliament. However, due to the requirement for a two-thirds majority to elect a Prime Minister, a new government was not formed until July 2004 when a deal was reached with the Funcinpec party.

Cambodia became a democracy in the early 1990s with the first democratic election held in 1993. After both elections during the 1990s the Cambodian People's Party formed coalition governments with the royalist Funcinpec party. The last election in 1998 saw significant amounts of violence and intimidation of opposition supporters. It took place a year after Funcinpec had been violently ousted from the coalition government by the Cambodian People's Party. However following the election they once more formed a coalition with Hun Sen as Prime Minister and Funcinpec's leader Prince Norodom Ranarridh, the son of King Norodom Sihanouk, as his deputy.

In local elections in 2002 the Cambodian People's Party performed strongly leading in 1,597 of the 1,621 communes of Cambodia. Meanwhile, the Funcinpec party suffered a setback dropping to only 22% of the vote.

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