Cyprus 2023 Presidential election: (1st round: 5 Feb; 2nd round: 12 Feb)

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If Christodoulidis wins, it will be the first time since 1976 that a president has been elected without the support of either DISY or AKEL, which really shows the weakening of the post-1974 party system that we already saw in the parliamentary elections.

Mavroyiannis and Neofytou have been remarkably close for the entire campaign. It seems very up in the air who will enter the second round.

Christodoulidis' campaign has been pretty vague about where he stands on a lot of things. Averof is mostly campaigning on continuing the policies of Anastasiadis while Mavroyiannis is portraying himself as the candidate for change.

Minor candidates likely to register a noteworthy percentage include the lawyer Achilleas Dimitriadis running on reunification and the far right ELAM leader Christos Christou.

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Christodoulidis' campaign has been pretty vague about where he stands on a lot of things. Averof is mostly campaigning on continuing the policies of Anastasiadis while Mavroyiannis is portraying himself as the candidate for change.

Do you think he's the favorite only because he's not supported by either the AKEL and DISY, aka, the "establishment" parties? Even though he was a member of DISY just 2 years ago.

There's a definately an element of his support that is a rejection of the two main parties but he is also popular in his own right. He took a significant chunk of DISY voters with him - in addition to the support he gets from the parties that endorsed him.

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The Metron Analysis poll gives us some more figures in addition to presidential voting intention.

Candidate approval ratings:
Christodoulidis: 56 - 38
Mavroyiannis: 52 - 39
Neofytou: 39 - 57
Dimitriadis: 37 - 42
Christou: 29 - 57

View of Anastasiadis' second term:
Positive - 44
Negative - 44

Direction of the country:
Right direction - 28
Wrong direction - 61

Presidential vote (with undecided):
Christodoulidis - 27
Neofytou - 22
Mavroyiannis - 21

Presidential vote (without undecided):
Christodoulidis - 32
Neofytou - 26
Mavroyiannis - 25

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What are the candidates' position on achieving reunification?

Reunification is something that most people say they support but when you get to the specifics, you start to lose people. All of the candidates are in favour of reunification except for Christou, just not reunification in this way or that way!

The 3 major candidates all say that they support a bizonal bicommunal federation. Mavroyiannis argues for it a bit more forcefully while Christodoulidis is backed by EDEK and DIKO who are generally less willing to compromise on the issue. An important disclaimer is that all of this is theoretical because the Turkish leadership is no longer interested in reunification anyway.

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The first round is tommorrow. Polls will be open from 7am to 6pm (UTC+2). After that, exit polls will come out and full results should be complete a few hours after that.

Polling average:
Christodoulidis - 34%
Mavroyiannis - 24%
Neofytou - 24%

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The official results page, results will begin to show up here soon: http://live.elections.moi.gov.cy/English/PRESIDENTIAL_ELECTIONS_2023/Islandwide

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Mavroyiannis is getting slightly less than Malas in most places that reported have reported so far - I think he's holding up well, more than enough to get into the second round.

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I made a map of the first round:


The key:


The map is a bit chaotic, there is plenty of blue but many old DISY strongholds did not show up for Averof, with a much weaker share of the vote and a few having Christodoulidis ahead. Mavroyiannis was able to maintain Malas' 2018 vote share in most places, despite AKEL's weak performance in 2021.

Christodoulidis dominated Pafos district - particularly in Pafos city and surrounding suburbs, where he is from. One place Neofytou did overperform was around Polis in northern Pafos district, where he is from and was mayor for a while.

Mavroyiannis came first in Nicosia - which is usually to the right of other cities and Cyprus as a whole. However, his vote share did not increase, he came first because Averof's share collapsed.

Past Election maps:
2018 Presidential 1st round
2018 Presidential 2nd round
2021 Legislative

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I assume that the DISY vote split a bit between Christodoulides and Neofytou. In fact, the results seem somewhat similar with 2018, as Mavroyiannis got basically the same votes, and share, that Malas had in 2018, and Neofytou lost around 30,000 votes, which seem to have went directly to Christodoulides.

I agree - and this is backed up by polls from before the election. However, Christodoulidis took a lot of votes from both DISY and AKEL in Pafos. Pafos has a great history of defying the national trend and it is also his home turf, but it is another factor nonetheless and is less visible because Pafos was already orange in 2018.

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There are divisions within DISY over the position to take in the second round. Anastasiadis has been pushing for an endorsement of Christodoulidis, who has offered to give DISY positions in his cabinet. Neofytou, on the other hand, believes that this would be rewarding a betrayal of the party. Most senior DISY members seem to agree with Neofytou. A meeting has been held this evening and is still ongoing, attendees were denouncing Christodoulidis as a defector and heckling the minister of education who endorsed him yesterday. Some attendees support Mavroyiannis, but the concensus seems to be towards taking a neutral position and this is reportedly what Neofytou and Anastasiadis agreed to behind closed doors.

What affect will this mess have on how DISY voters behave in the second round? I don't know. This situation is new, DISY has never been excluded from the second round before.

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Some attendees support Mavroyiannis

What rationale would a DISY member have to support the AKEL candidate over the centrist candidate? My understanding is that DISY is generally right-wing and AKEL is generally left-wing, though I know Cypriot politics have plenty of peculiarities. Is there some particular wedge issue on which Mavroyannis is likely to be better than Christodoulidis from DISY's perspective?

A lot of it is personal and strictly partisan rather than ideological. Christodoulidis was a DISY member and minister who ran an independent campaign with the support of opposition parties instead of backing the official DISY candidate. The view of many DISY members is that this was an act of betrayal and some would rather back someone who they see as an honest man even if they don't like AKEL.

In terms of substantial political issues, DISY has traditionally been pragmatic on reunification. They are arguably closer to AKEL on the issue than EDEK or DIKO. Some DISY members announced their support for Mavroyiannis on these grounds, but frankly I'm hearing much more about defectors and betrayal than about anything substantial.

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Its official, DISY decided in the meeting last night to be neutral and allow its members to freely support either candidate. Averof implied pretty strongly that he personally would vote for Mavroyiannis.

what areas voted for Christou? With such a small % of the vote I'm surprised he won anywhere. Are they very rural/very racist areas, or something?

Two villages voted for Christou: Politiko and Kannavkia. Politiko is his home town. There is long standing right wing nationalist strength in Kannavkia and many nearby villages going back to the 60s, which would help explain ELAM's vote share there now. Takis Evdokas got 15% of the vote there in 1968, which was one of his best performances in the country.

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Will there be any polls for the runoff, or are they forbidden?

Publication of polls is banned a week before the election, so we'll have to rely on the polls from before the first round.

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The second round is tommorrow. Just like last week, polls will be open from 7am to 6pm (UTC+2), followed by exit polls and after that the results should come in very quickly.

Most polls had Christodoulidis winning with over 60% of the vote. He's still likely to win but Mavroyiannis is probably in a better position than he was when the polling silence started two weeks ago.


Just an update on the positions of the parties/candidates that were eliminated in the first round or didn't endorse:
- ELAM endorsed neither candidate but said they oppose an AKEL-led government.
- The Ecologists also endorsed neither candidate.
- Among the minor candidates, Achilleas Dimitriadis and Constantinos Christofidis endorsed Mavroyiannis while Giorgios Kolokasidis endorsed neither candidate.
- DISY infighting continues. Anastasiadis criticized the behaviour of his party during Tuesday's meeting.

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http://live.elections.moi.gov.cy/English/PRESIDENTIAL__RUNOFF_ELECTIONS_2023/Islandwide

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Mavroyiannis conceded

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A map of the second round. I changed the colour scheme to contrast better.


The key:


On the surface, most of this map outside Pafos district doesn't look that different from what a very close DISY/AKEL second round would look like. Christodoulidis won many DISY strongholds in Pitsilia (Troodos mountains) and rural Larnaca/Limassol districts by wide margins. Meanwhile, areas of Nicosia that Anastasiadis won with over 70% of the vote went to Christodoulidis with vote shares only in the 50s. As in the first round, Christodoulidis performed very strongly in Pafos district and city.

Other 2023 maps:
2023 Round 1
2023 Round 2 with a different colour scheme

Past Election maps:
2018 Presidential 1st round
2018 Presidential 2nd round
2021 Legislative

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A bit more of a regional breakdown of the results:

 

 

A few points:
- As mentioned previously, Christodoulidis performed very well in Paphos and its suburbs, this is his home turf. Neofytou did well in his home region around Polis, which helps explain why he did better than Anastasiadis in rural Paphos district.
- Christodoulidis did very well at Neofytou's expense in Famagusta district, where DISY has always been strong.
- Christodoulidis clearly underperformed in Nicosia district and particularly in the city itself. His vote didn't increase nearly as much as it did everwhere else.
- Mavroyiannis' vote was stable accross the board. He slightly overperformed in Limassol and underperformed more strongly in Paphos.
- Christou's vote increased moderately in most places except for Pafos where he also underperformed.
- Neofytou underformed in Limassol, which both Mavroyiannis and Christodoulidis seem to have benefitted from to some extent. Anastasiadis was relatively strong here.
- The big increase in votes for 'other' candidates in Nicosia is primarily thanks to Achilleas Dimitriadis who is closely associated with the city, his father was mayor for 30 years.