Cambodia parliamentary election 2013

[Famous Mortimer]

Major parties:

Cambodian People's Party: Incumbent authoritarian party. Will win. Vaguely left-wing. Emerged largely from the Vietnamese backed Communist government in the 80s.

Cambodian National Rescue Party: Liberal oppositionist party formed by the merger of the Sam Rainsy Party (named for its leader) and the ideologically similar Human Rights Party.

National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia or FUNCINPEC party: Royalist party. Currently in coalition with the Cambodian People's Party, although the coalition is mostly out of convenience. They would probably support the opposition if the opposition ever had a real shot at power. Currently led by Princess Arunrasmy. Anyone know what happened to Prince Ranariddh?

[minionofmidas]

Liberal? Antivietnamese. From which follows, secondarily and out of necessity, prothai and proamerican. (The mainstream of American officialdom has made its peace with Sen, and is paying him richly in foreign aid in exchange for economic concessions, but there are still those who still fight the Vietnam and "Anticommunist" war. Word needs to be put in quote marks since these are the very people who kept the Khmer Rouge alive all through the 1980s... and yes, old Khmer Rouge sympathizers form a considerable part of Rainsy's base to this day.*) From which follows, thirdly and out of necessity, a sorta liberal/human rights stance. Which also follows out of being perpetual opposition in a less-than-democracy, of course - since it's basically saying "we'd like the noncontinual but frequent police harassment of our activists to stop."
In no small third-world country do political terms mean what they seem to mean to the West. Not a one.

http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/in-former-kr-bastion-oppositions-appeal-falls-flat-33064/

Ranariddh has wound up his party; its two MPs have rejoined Funcinpec.

[minionofmidas]

The CPP's whole election message is "we brought peace, these are basically the same people who brought war, and they want to do it again." I'm not claiming that that is true, of course.

[Famous Mortimer]

CPP won but they lost like 20 seats. The opposition gained 20 seats. It was very close. Looks like Cambodia is moving towards a 2 party system. Less than 10% voted for other parties.

[minionofmidas]

Preliminary results
CPP    2,555,030    49.4 (-8.5)    67    –23
CNRP    2,295,022    44.3 (+15.8)    56    +27 (compared to SRP and HRP combined)
Funcinpec    171,906    3.3 (-8.4)    0    –4 (compared to Funcinpec and NRP combined)
   League for Democracy Party    53,158    1.0 (-0.2)    0    0

Turnout appears to be way down on the last election, which may help explain why the opposition did, basically, marginally better than in their wildest dreams. (Even if it's just a breakdown in government ability to cajole unwilling voters to the polls rather than apathy in a strict sense.)

Understandably, they now believe they actually won. We'll see what happens.

I could not find a vote breakdown by province, but I did find a seat breakdown, and the CPP's margin of victory comes from the northwest and the super-remote northeast and southwest of the country - the opposition actually squeaked a win in the fertile southeastern and central heartland.

[minionofmidas]

http://www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/cnrp-will-be-troublesome-for-cpp-led-assembly-37377/

[minionofmidas]

Numbers are seat tallies (added on account of the variation in population density); CPP first.

Funcinpec rump vote mostly in the north, with 5 to 8% in Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Thom, Siem Reap, Ottar Meanchey, Siem Reap, Preah Vihear, Stung Treng and taking 12% (and coming quite close to salvaging a seat actually) in Banteay Meanchey. They came third everywhere, even in Phnom Penh where they took just 1.2% of the vote.

[Tender Branson]

Why are Phnom Penh and suburbs voting so heavily for the opposition ?

Is it because of the dictatorial government re-locations of residents in that area because the government wants to build expensive villas there for the government folks and their cronies ?

[minionofmidas]

Sam Rainsy has always been strongest in Phnom Penh.

2008


2003


Ignore the seat tallies (they're 2013's, I threw these up in a couple of minutes). White in 2003 is CPP >40, grey is CPP >35 (actually, 39.9% in both cases). That said, a lot of the bush country didn't swing at all this year.

Kandal appears to include some suburban areas nowadays, but mostly it's just exceedingly fertile Mekong bottomland. Though population densities don't approach Javan or Bangladeshi levels.