2014 Syrian presidential election

Presidential elections were held in Syria on 3 June 2014. This was the first direct presidential election in Syria since the 1953 presidential election and the first multi-candidate election. The result was a landslide victory for Bashar al-Assad, who received over 90% of the valid votes. He was sworn in for a third seven-year term on 16 July in the presidential palace in Damascus. There is scholarly consensus that the elections were not democratic.

The elections took place amidst the Syrian civil war, which had begun three years before. As a result of the war, the country had the largest refugee population in the world at the time of the elections, with voting for refugees in certain foreign countries began at Syrian embassies several days before voting in Syria. Domestic and foreign-based Syrian opposition groups boycotted the election and voting did not take place in large parts of Syria under rebel control. The areas under Kurdish militia control also did not allow voting due to the refusal of the government to recognize their claim for regional autonomy, though some people traveled to government–controlled areas to vote.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, the European Union and the United States decried the election as illegitimate. Attempts to hold an election under the circumstances of a civil war were also criticized by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and it was widely reported that the elections lacked independent election monitoring.