Zimbabwe elections 2013

[jaichind]

Election is 7/31.  One thing that is different is ZAPU which merged with ZANU-PF back in 1980 broke away from ZANU-PF in the aftermath of 2008 elections and now will run its own candidate.  MDC which its two factions will run a candidate each.  I wonder if ZANU will pull away votes from ZANU-PF or be just another party that splits the anti-ZANU-PF vote.  Of course it does not really matter that much as this will only affect how much ballot stuffing ZANU-PF will have to do for Mugabe to win.

[jaichind]

Tsvangirai is very unlikely to win.  Not due to outright ballot stuffing by ZANU-PF but by other factors that ZANU-PF already done to make this an election that is tilted to ZANU-PF.   First some MDC officials have been in involved in corruption which lost MDC moral ground in urban areas.  Second, the voter rolls are such so that it has as many as a million people who are dead or disappeared and about 29% of the 18-30 year olds are not registered.  So who gets to vote already puts ZANU-PF ahead, and power sharing has to some extend dented MDF's edge.

[jaichind]

One thing that is clear from this result is that ZANU-PF is for sure more popular than it was in 2008.  One can discuss how ZANU-PF rigs the results but it was rigging them back in 2008 as well and only got 46% of the vote and less than a majority of the seats after rigging.  Now it seems that ZANU-PF will win two-thirds of the seats.  Just like in 2008 Prez elections Mugabe won 43% of the vote in the first round and had to resort to massive violence to drive Tsvangirai out of the second round.  Now it seems that Mugabe will win by a large margin on the first round with obvious rigging but no mass violence.  So no matter waht ZANU-PF is more popular than back in 2008.  I dare say it is even possible that this year in a fair fight ZANU-PF might even win when in 2008 that was impossible.