General elections were held in Kenya in February 1961. The result was a victory for the Kenya African National Union, which won 19 of the 53 elected seats.

Twenty seats were reserved for minority communities; ten for whites, eight for Indians and two for Arabs. There were also twelve appointees.^[1] Primary elections were held for the reserved seats by members of the respective communities, and candidates receiving at least 25% of the vote advanced to the main elections.^[2]

Of the 1,411,117 registered voters, 29,879 (2.18%) were Indian, 19,332 (1.37%) white and 5,472 (0.38%) Arabs.^[3]

Nine constituencies (with a total of 353,251 registered voters) were uncontested, reducing the number of actual voters to 1,057,866.^[3]