March 5 Election and Nepal’s Youthquake

Nepal’s March 5, 2026 election to the House of Representatives (HoR) has delivered one of the most striking political shocks in the country’s electoral history. In a stunning display of voter anger and impatience with the political establishment, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) won a landslide with 182 seats in the HoR, leaving the country’s traditional powerhouses—the Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal–Unified Marxist–Leninist (CPN-UML)—flabbergasted by an unprecedented electoral rejection.