Turkish snap election, June 2018

[jaichind]

State-run Anadolu Agency calls the election for Erdogan

[jaichind]

AKP spokesperson says turnout was 87%.

[jaichind]

CHP says data still incomplete from large cities so it is wrong to call the election.

[jaichind]

TRY most likely will fall now that Erdogan has won on the first round.  Erdogan promised lower interest rates and that would mean only one thing for inflation and TRY.

[jaichind]

Here's an interesting thing...nowhere on yenisafak.com does it give a statistical breakdown of the votes, just the percentages. Easier to hide the numbers that you fudged if done correctly.

Well it does give total votes so they expect the user to do the math (using %) to calculate the total vote for each party or candidate.

[jaichind]

[...]
It seems SP's alliance with CHP-IYI did not help since at 1.4% they were not able to qualify in any seats anywhere, even in Istanbul.  So we can view 1.4% of the 33.3% of CHP-IYI-SP as wasted.
[...]

Looking at the preliminary seat distributions in each province they only make sense when applying d'Hondt to the alliances and not to the single parties. Therefore the 1.4% of SP still count for CHP and IYI.

I'm surprised about this myself because before the election I already wondered about this, but wasn't able to retrieve any confirmation and therefore assumed that d'Hondt would not be applied to the alliances as a whole.

How interesting.  I was going to check that eventually.  But if so then how does CHP IYI and SP (and for that matter AKP and MHP) work out which party list gets which seats?  Unless there is some registered contract on the allocation method which is also handed over to the election commission.  Sounds very complex.

Of course if true then it works to the advantage of both alliances at the cost of HDP.

It's not that complicated. Italy has used systems like that in the past. Basically, there's a first division of seats between alliances, and then each alliance's seats are again apportioned among its constituent parties using the same formula.

Good point.  If it is the way tack50 describes it then it sounds a lot like the Italian system.

[jaichind]

https://www.yenisafak.com/

With 96.8% of the vote counted it is Erdogan at 52.8%

With 93.3% of the vote counted it is
AKP-MHP    53.9% 
CHP-IYI-SP 34.0%
HDP           11.0%

[jaichind]

CHP's Tezcan insist the Prez election is going to the second round.  Main problem I have with his narrative is the Parliamentary vote share seems to match the Prez results.  So for the fraud he claims to have taken place it would have also taken place for the Parliamentary ballots as well. The scale and effort to pull this off and be consistent is very large.    

[jaichind]

Official government seat projection puts AKP-MHP at 308 seats, 7 above the majority:

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1010963921002475520

Other media outlets has AKP-MHP at 342 seats
https://www.yenisafak.com/secim-2018/ittifak-secim-sonuclari

CNN Turk has AKP-MHP at 344.

[jaichind]

Tunceli seems to have large scale tactical voting

Prez
İnce         58.1%
Demirtaş  21.0%
Erdoğan   18.8%
Akşener     1.8%

Parliamentary
HDP             51.1%
CHP+IYI+SP 28.3%
AKP-MHP      19.3%

It seems a large bloc of HDP voters voted tactically for Ince.  Not sure why there is a need as Ince was not expected to win on the first round so there will always be a chance to vote for Ince in the second round if Erdoğan does not win on first round.

[jaichind]

Erdogan sounds really reconciliatory in his victory speech.  It might be because he is in an official presidential palace in Istanbul and not at a AKP party building.  Erdogan underlines his dedication to completing mega projects, such as Canal Istanbul and domestic car.

[jaichind]

https://www.yenisafak.com/

With 98.4% of the vote counted it is Erdogan at 52.7%

With 95.5% of the vote counted it is
AKP-MHP    53.7% 
CHP-IYI-SP 34.1%
HDP           11.2%

[jaichind]

Erdogan did say that "we could not reach our target in Parliament."   I assume he means that AKP failed to get to a majority on its own.  Although 293 out of 600 seems pretty close.

[jaichind]

CHP presidential candidate Ince will make a statement after the election board announces preliminary results, according to Ince's office.

[jaichind]

It seems AKP-MHP actually improved on their performance in Nov 2015 in Kurdish areas.  The 2017 referendum already saw a large gap between the Yes vote and the Nov 2015 AKP+MHP vote shares.  It seems that carried over into this election.  Just like the Kurdish areas saved Erdogan in the 2017 referendum if the AKP-MHP saw a large swing against it in Kurdish areas then perhaps Erdogan might fall below 50%.   Just like the 2017 referendum it was in the urban areas like Istanbul that AKP-MHP lost ground since Nov 2015. 

[jaichind]

Ince acknowledges that based on unofficial results Erdogan has won but indicated that the election was not a fair election.

[jaichind]

Worth noting that, in long-term perspective, this really isn't a very good result for Erdogan. This is the lowest total for AKP+MHP since 2002, and by a long shot. I know expectations were that they'd fall below 50%, but the fact that they're barely above it, while back in the days AKP either had an absolute majority on its own or only needed a couple more votes to get it, clearly shows that the country is souring on Erdogan.

Of course, this might not mean sh*t is the transition to dictatorship continues apace...

Well, IYI's sizeable vote share would indicate that the pre-2018 MHP vote was most evenly split between MHP and IYI.  So a 2018 AKP-MHP vote share comparison with its pre-2018 equivalent does not feel like a fair comparison.  Perhaps a 2018 AKP-MHP vote share versus a pre-2018 AKP-(50% of MHP) comparison. 

[jaichind]

As I pointed out before, this election was held just in time for Erdogan to win.  Turkey 2010-2017 average GDP growth is around 6.5%.  2018-2020 expected GDP growth will be around 4.0% which is a significant slowdown.   And that I suspect is an overestimate as it does not take into account rising interest rates and/or greater inflation. 

[jaichind]

It seems that the vote for Parliamentary is larger than the vote fore President.  Around 3% of the Parliamentary vote failed to vote for a Presidential candidate.

A superficial analysis of the results by province seems to indicate that
a) Most of this shortfall is MHP Parliamentary voters failing to vote for Erdoğan
b) Erdoğan seems to have over-performed AKP-MHP in Kurdish areas
c) In Armenian/Azerbaijanis heavy Iğdır Province Erdoğan way under-performed AKP-MHP

Net of all this AKP-MHP vote share ended being 53.67% while Erdoğan vote share ended up being 52.38%.  The Erdoğan over-performance in Kurdish areas seems to have closed some of the near 3% gap between Erdoğan and AKP-MHP due to some MHP non-vote for Erdoğan.

[jaichind]

A regression of the 2015 vote and 2018 vote with the 2017 referendum results seems to indicate that most of the 2018 MHP vote came from 2015 AKP voters.  Most of the 2017 MHP No voters on the referendum went over to IYI while the 2017 MHP Yes voters stayed in MHP.   Some of the 2017 Kurdish HDP Yes voters also went over to AKP.

Erdoğan's victory was one of Turkish nationalism.   In regions outside of the heavy Kurdish areas, Erdoğan ran 2%-3% ahead of the 2017 Yes vote, even in the coastal areas areas where CHP is strong.  In areas where Kurdish population is significant Erdoğan ran 4%-8% behind the 2017 Yes vote which means some HDP/Kurdish voters voted Yes in 2017 but did not vote Erdoğan.  If Erdoğan did not run 2%-3% ahead of the 2017 Yes vote in non-Kurdish areas he most likely would have failed to cross 50%.

[jaichind]

Turkey: CHP’s election data matches Anadolu Agency’s

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/turkey-chp-s-election-data-matches-anadolu-agency-s/1189373

This is AA saying this of course.  Still it seems to me that the data implied there was no mass vote count manipulation.  The vote share in different provinces seems highly correlated to previous election results.

Also in Kurdish areas Erdoğan's vote share ran 4%-8% behind the 2017 Yes vote.  If there were logical areas to do ballot stuffing this would be it since after the fact Erdoğan can correctly say "see, there was not cheating, I merely got the same votes that voted Yes on the 2017 referendum."  But instead Erdoğan ran behind the 2017 Yes vote here and won anyway.

[jaichind]

Erdogan puts his son-in-law in charge of a new combined ministry of treasury and finance which will most likely begin an era of fiscal activism.   I am sure his new pick for central bank governor will promote loose monetary policy.  Most likely foreign investments will dry up and Erdogan  will now have to fund economic growth with mostly domestic capital.  Most likely inflation will surge in the coming years.

[jaichind]

The TRY crisis hitting meltdown point which is made worse by US-Turkey standoff.    Again shows the wisdom of  Erdoğan  calling the election early and getting it out of the way.  Of course the US-Turkey standoff is most likely made worse by a  Erdoğan  strategy of shifting the blame of economic woes to come on US sanctions when it fact it is a result of policies of his own making.  Again well played by  Erdoğan.

[jaichind]

It seems there is going to be a very significant economic downturn in Turkey soon.   That does not seem avoidable.