[1] Incumbent President Robert Mugabe was re-elected, whilst his ZANU–PF party won a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.

[2] This was the first election held under the new constitution approved in a referendum in March 2013[3] and signed into law by President Robert Mugabe on 22 May.

[4] The Supreme Court ruled on 31 May that President Mugabe should set a date as soon as possible, and that presidential and parliamentary elections must be held by 31 July.

[5] The ruling followed an application to the court by a Zimbabwean citizen, Jealousy Mawarire,[6] demanding that the country's president set the date for elections before the expiry of the tenure of the seventh parliament, on 29 June 2013.

[21] These accusations were repeated in 2013, with the additional claim that a considerable number of young voters had not been registered.

[22] The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), a local observer group with 7,000 monitors, listed a litany of offences, including state media bias, a campaign of intimidation in rural areas, and the rushed electoral process before key reforms to the security services were in place.

Held back until the day before the election – thus avoiding proper scrutiny – the roll revealed an estimated one million invalid names, including many deceased voters.

[26] On 9 August 2013, the Movement for Democratic Change sought to have the results declared null and void.

[29] Robert Mugabe won 62% of the vote to claim a sixth term as president, and was sworn in on Thursday 22 August.

Reports by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network monitoring group said as many as one million people, mostly in urban areas (which tend to favour the MDC), were unable to cast votes.

He claimed over a million voters were turned away from the polling stations, and said the Movement for Democratic Change would no longer work with Mugabe nor participate in government institutions.