Election of the Day: The Bahamas

The Bahamas are in the process of electing a new parliament today. The next Bahamanian parliament will have 41 seats (up from 39), and members will be elected in the manner befitting their colonial lineage, single member district first past the post elections. Bahamanian politics has been dominated by two parties historically, but today’s election is noteworthy in part because of the rise of a third contender.

The Progressive Liberal Party, led by PM Philip Davis, has been the center-left party of Bahamanian politics. They won big in 2021, claiming 32 of the 39 seats. They are historically opposed by Free National Movement, the center right party in The Bahamas two party system, and the Coalition of Independents, a third party that managed to get around 8000 votes in 2021 (out of around 126k, with 66k and 46k going to the PLP and FNM, respectively) and are expected to be a real threat to break through and win some seats today.

Some of the themes in this election may be familiar to residents of one of The Bahama’s North American neighbors. The PLP is expected to retain power, but by a much more narrow margin than they currently hold. The FNM has made significant recent gains in the last two weeks by focusing a great deal on the problem of illegal immigration, changing their election slogan from “We work for you, not for the few” to “Save our Sovereignty.” Like their larger North American neighbor, The Bahamas has long had a non-trivial population of unauthorized immigrants, primarily but not exclusively from a much poorer and less stable neighbor (in their case Haiti) that has filled important labor market niches. But recently the volume of such immigration has increased, due largley to the heightening of various crises in Haiti, and it’s presented the opportunity for a backlash. PLP has been scrambling to neutralize the issue with their own crackdown. This, along with relentlessly attacking the sitting government’s alleged failures on cost of living issues, has helped the FNM recover from some early campaign controversies of their own. Some of those controversies revolve around one of their candidates, Rick Fox. Fox is the wealthiest candidate standing for parliament by a wide margin and is a well-known figure in the Bahamas, due to a degree of fame generated by his earlier careers (North American readers may be familiar with Fox from his successful tenures as an NBA player and actor), his largely ceremonial but high profile role for Philips’ PLP government (“ambassador-at-large for sports”?) before becoming publicly critical of PLP governance in 2025, questions about his citizenship status and eligibility (there seems to be some controversy over whether he needs to renounce his Canadian citizenship to run for office, and whether he actually has) and an unfortunate incident on the campaign trail where he lunged menacingly at a critic during an argument at a campaign stop.

And then there’s the Coalition of Independents, which could be the first third party to break through in the short history of The Bahamas as an independent nation. They’re a classic anti-establishment populist party with some left and some right characteristics, campaigning against the ruling “duopoly.” They lean hard on anti-corruption and anti-immigration themes (the FMN is kind of copying them on the latter) and are very social-media savvy. Iram Lewis, then a FMN MP, quit his party to join the COI in 2025, giving them their first presence in parliament. The consensus seems to be that they’re a larger threat to the FMN than the PLP, although there’s a fair amount of uncertainty about that. FMN has tried to paint COI as a spoiler for PLP during the campaign. There’s little public polling to work from to figure out how seriously to take this threat. We’ll find out soon enough; polls close at 6:00 PM today.