Belarus 2020 election type event.

[kelestian]

Unfortunately, we have too little protocols to say anything about real results. And there haven't been any real elections for 20 years, so we cant say anything substantial about trends basing on existing data. I would say, at best results are like 60% Lukashenko 30% Svetlana (if there is pro-government landslide in  rural country and in east), but more like 60% Svetlana, 35% Luka

[😥]

https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/articles/2020/08/10/7113009/

You can read this article about recent events in Belarus (it's in Ukrainian, but Google Translate can help)

Lukashenko has just said that all protests and riots are being led by the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine. It is very funny and scary to watch this mustachioed clown of Putin hold on to power

[urutzizu]

Where are you getting those Tikhanovskaya 70% Lukashenka 15% numbers?

It's the Opposition Exit Polls, which were posted on the first page, and part on which basis the opposition is saying Tikhanovskaya won. There are a variety of them, some are claiming the results inside Belarus (which are ridiculous), some claiming the diaspora results by questioning them outside embassies (greater likelyhood for accuracy but still obvious exaggeration of opposition support), but all are reporting a landslide of improbable proportions, just like Lukashenko is. Many respectable media are taking these and framing them as neutral and accurate, which they are not:

Unabhängige Erhebungen im Ausland kamen zu einem anderen Ergebnis als die staatlichen Stellen: Demnach soll Tichanowskaja 71 Prozent geholt haben - Lukaschenko nur zehn Prozent.

In English:

Independent foreign surveys came to a different result than the state authorities: Tichanovskaya is said to have gained 71 percent - Lukashenko only ten percent.

First thing I saw by our state broadcaster this morning. Haven't looked at the Anglophone media yet, but I assume you'd find broadly the same stuff. Agree with the rest of your post.

[Karpatsky]

Belarusian sites are back up.

Interesting article in English here on how Ru state media has not been entirely friendly to Sasha in their coverage: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/10/the-people-have-been-insulted-russia-reacts-to-belarus-presidential-vote-unrest-a71098

This suggests no defined narrative is coming down the pipes from the Kremlin yet.

I've got to say, Zhirinovsky has been surprising me ever since the Furgal thing - he seems to be a bit more complex than I had assumed.

[Mr. Illini]

Somewhat surprised at the degree to which the media is covering the illegitimacy of this event as a surprise or that Belarus is somehow going through democratic backsliding.

Belarus hasn't been a democracy for a long time. The difference, I suppose, is that now there is some mass resistance to this fact, for the first time in a long time.

Hopefully whatever the people's will is will prevail. As an outside observer, I'd like for Lukashenko to go the way of Viktor Yanukovych.

[CumbrianLefty]

I wonder what the exiled Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic will do if Tsikhanouskaya wins. Would they join the government?

Heh, amuses me that even still exists tbh.

[Karpatsky]

@mods can we merge with this thread?

https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=387482.msg7505202

[warandwar]

I don't see the Issue with that Post. The Idea that Tikhanovskaya supposedly won 70% of Votes compared to barely 15% for Lukashenko is as ridiculous as the results from the Government, and it is stunning how smart people (on here and in the media broadly) that pride themselves on critical thinking, just take these opposition claims as fact, as if pro-western opposition could never do wrong. Bloody hell, Maduro has even by most opposition estimates a support base of ~25% in the Population, and Belarus is nowhere near that situation. Authoritarians in neighboring Poland and Russia have solid majority support in the Population. And Lukashenko is supposed to have 15%?? I think some of your still really have trouble understanding that Authoritiarian Regimes can actually have very legitimate public support, just because you cannot imagine supporting it yourselves. Personally, I highly doubt you are going to see a revolution in Belarus, and I am not convinced twitter videos spread by dubious figures are very reflective of what is going on. And I think even if is does, I don't think many people here are going to like what could be the result. The EU has no military capabilities, the US is not politically interested, there is exactly one country that would be able to exploit a power vacuum in Belarus immediately, and net you have a good chance you would end up with a Russian Vassal, instead of Lukashenko who was willing recently to take a relatively independent posture toward Russia and better relations with the EU.

Great post! Yeah if it was really 70-15, we'd be seeing a much worse situation on the ground - more bullets. I suspect the "real" results would show geographically diverse support, but it would be shocking if a majority of rural Belarus voted for the opposition. This is not to say they don't support her, of course.

[GlobeSoc]

i think that the reason that putin doesn't really care that much is that, if you look at the structure of the belarus economy, russian oil props up a large section of it. Belarus can have free elections all it wants, and the most vigorous debates on social policy and how private/public the economy should be, but at the end of the day Putin has automatic leverage over the country to prevent it from being geopolitically pro-western. The biggest resource that minsk has for moscow is miles between it and nato. There is no sevastapol base to make the russians nervous nor the internal ethnic boundary that ukraine has.

[CumbrianLefty]

I think some people genuinely thought the original "official" result was the real figures swapped round. A nice thought but, as well explained above, highly unlikely to actually be the case.

[Karpatsky]

I think some people genuinely thought the original "official" result was the real figures swapped round. A nice thought but, as well explained above, highly unlikely to actually be the case.

That's not really the point. It's possible Tikhanovskaya received the majority of votes cast, and the information leaked from polling stations suggests that's more likely than not, but at the end of the day, the results of the election which was held - either the official results, or even the true, unknowable sum of the votes cast and thrown out by officials - are irrelevant because the election was not free and fair from the start. This is why from the beginning Tikhanovskaya's core campaign promise has been to immediately hold new, free elections.

[CumbrianLefty]

I think some people genuinely thought the original "official" result was the real figures swapped round. A nice thought but, as well explained above, highly unlikely to actually be the case.

That's not really the point.

Yes, I know. Literally everyone knows this was a fundamentally fake exercise (even the thread title!)