[1] 24 political parties and around 100 independent lists with a total of more than 12,000 candidates competed for the 389 seats in the National People's Assembly.

While most Algerians voted on May 17, immigrants from Algeria to other countries (especially France) and Algerians living in the Sahara (i.e. Southern Algeria) and other nomads and semi-nomads voted on May 16 due to the distance from Algiers, the country's capital.

[2][3] Several political organisations, notably the Socialist Forces Front,[4] the ex-communist Democratic and Social Movement,[5] leading members of the former Islamic Salvation Front (Abbassi Madani[6] and Ali Belhadj), the main faction of the split Islamist Islah Party,[7] and the newly formed organisation Rachad,[8] had called on their supporters to boycott these elections.

These political groups claimed that the elections were consistently rigged by the government, and that participation merely lent a fundamentally corrupt process undeserved legitimacy.

The Constitutional Council confirmed the results of the election, with slight changes to the voter turn-out rate and number of seats won by some parties, on May 21.