In an election marked by low voter turnout, initial results suggest that populist candidates Nabil Karoui and Kais Saied have made it into the second round of voting.

While the initial result is open to legal challenges, Tunisia’s electoral oversight body confirmed private polling that indicated retired law professor Saied had won the first round of voting, followed by jailed television boss Karoui. 

Saied and Karoui's passage to the next round of voting, scheduled for November, is the most emphatic rejection of Tunisia’s political class since the revolution of 2011. Many of Tunisia’s sacred cows have fallen, from technocrat Prime Minister Youssef Chahed to Defense Minister Abdelkarim Zbidi and moderate Islamist Ennahda’s Abdelfattah Mourou, all of whom are perceived as having presided over the country’s gradual decline and fall. 

“I want the government to provide jobs and money to young people for projects,“ said Khalil Mlouki, a univeristy graduate who was among the 54% of Tunisians to withhold their vote. Mlouki, who has been unemployed since 2015, explained, “The current generation of politicians is no good.”