Raila Odinga's Five Presidential Runs, Result by Result

Updated 2 October 2026.

Raila Odinga ran for President of Kenya five times and never won. He finished third in 1997 with 10.79 per cent, second in 2007 with 44.07 per cent, second in 2013 with 43.70 per cent, second in August 2017 with 44.74 per cent, and second in 2022 with 48.85 per cent, his highest share. He also stayed on the ballot of the October 2017 repeat election after announcing he had withdrawn. In 2002 he did not run and backed Mwai Kibaki instead. He died on 15 October 2025, aged 80.

The five results in one table

Sources: Nohlen, Krennerich and Thibaut's Elections in Africa data handbook for 1997, the African Elections Database for 2007, and the IEBC's declared results for 2013 to 2022. In the repeat election of 26 October 2017 he was recorded with 73,228 votes, 0.96 per cent.

1997: third place, and a new base

Odinga ran on the National Development Party ticket and came third, behind Moi and Kibaki. Michael Kijana Wamalwa of FORD-Kenya, the party Odinga's father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga had led until his death in 1994, finished fourth with 505,704. That split of the opposition vote is the backdrop to everything he did in 2002.

2002: the run he did not make

In 2002 Odinga joined the opposition alliance that became the National Rainbow Coalition and backed Kibaki, who beat Uhuru Kenyatta with 62.20 per cent. A pre-election memorandum of understanding promised his faction a prime minister's post and half of the cabinet. Neither was delivered after Kibaki took office. That broken deal fed the 2005 referendum fight and the birth of the Orange Democratic Movement.

2007: the closest official margin

ODM chose Odinga as its candidate on 1 September 2007, with Musalia Mudavadi named as his running mate. The Electoral Commission of Kenya declared Kibaki the winner on 30 December 2007, about 232,000 votes ahead. ODM rejected the result. About 1,000 people were killed and some 250,000 displaced in the violence that followed. A power-sharing deal brokered by Kofi Annan was signed in February 2008, and Odinga was sworn in as Prime Minister on 17 April 2008.

2013: the first petition

Odinga ran under the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy with Kalonzo Musyoka as running mate. Kenyatta cleared the 50 per cent line by a fraction. Odinga went to the Supreme Court, which dismissed the petition on 30 March 2013. The court also held that rejected votes should not have been counted when the IEBC worked out percentages, a point explained in what is a presidential run-off.

2017: an annulment, then a boycott

Running for the National Super Alliance, again with Kalonzo, Odinga lost by about 1.4 million votes on the IEBC's count. He petitioned, and on 1 September 2017 the Supreme Court, by four votes to two, annulled the result and ordered a fresh election within 60 days. Chief Justice David Maraga read the decision. It was the first time a Kenyan presidential election had been nullified.

On 10 October Odinga announced he would not take part in the repeat poll, saying no reforms had been made. The IEBC kept his name on the ballot. Kenyatta won on 26 October with 98.26 per cent on a turnout of 39.03 per cent. On 30 January 2018 Odinga staged a ceremony in Nairobi naming himself the "People's President". On 9 March 2018 he and Kenyatta shook hands at Harambee House, the start of the "handshake" and the Building Bridges Initiative. The county-level picture is in the 2017 results by county.

2022: his best share

Odinga's fifth run came after the handshake years. He ran as the candidate of the Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya Coalition Party, with Martha Karua as running mate, and took 6,942,930 votes. Ruto won with 7,176,141, a gap of 233,211 votes. The IEBC declared the result on 15 August 2022 after four IEBC commissioners, led by vice-chair Juliana Cherera, said they could not take ownership of the results. Odinga petitioned again. On 5 September 2022 a unanimous Supreme Court upheld Ruto's win, and Chief Justice Martha Koome described one of the petition's central technology claims as "no more than hot air". The county-by-county breakdown is in Kenya's 2022 presidential results by county.

After the fifth run

Kenya nominated Odinga for Chairperson of the African Union Commission in February 2024. He lost to Djibouti's Mahamoud Ali Youssouf on 15 February 2025, after seven rounds. On 7 March 2025 he and President Ruto signed a ten-point memorandum of understanding between ODM and the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), the basis of what became the broad-based arrangement.

He died of a cardiac arrest in Kerala, India, on 15 October 2025 and was buried beside his father in Bondo on 19 October 2025.

His death came 22 months before the 10 August 2027 election, and the contest for the voters he held is covered in the rest of our 2026 coverage.

Across 25 years, his vote rose from 667,886 to 6,942,930, and his share from about a tenth to within 1.64 points of the winner. How each President since 1963 reached State House is in Kenya's Presidents since independence.