Can the opposition rely on ‘economic voting’ alone?

Many academic electoral studies use confidence indices, unemployment, and inflation to predict the election results. Yes, economic voting is important but this doesn’t mean that economic woes automatically translate into votes.

● The potential for economic voting seems to have followed an autoregressive process that could be captured in very simple terms by an ARMA (1, 1) – including municipal elections. The memory is short and backward-looking, except that loan (credit) and wealth effect memories are more persistent.

● It isn’t perhaps long-memory dependent, but incumbent party supporters still remember past waves of easy access to credit and prosperity in markets. Economic voting always works in the backdrop but in an oblique way.

● The most recent polls suggest that the AKP has basically been confined to its core constituency but that the undecided can still change the outcome. Despite an incredible amount of poverty and steeply rising inflation, the incumbent bloc seems to have consolidated itself around 40% of the vote, if not more.

● Even so, AKP voters are informed enough to realize that the Lira may not reach equilibrium so easily.

● They also realize that inflation is here to stay. The undecided are undecided not because they don’t see what is going on but because they hesitate.

● The median voter hesitates, not solely some AKP voters. The incumbent party has been in power for two decades; a new government looks like an adventure to some voters. The two major contenders (alliances) are more or less in balance. The HDP + some small parties on the left could bring in 11-12% of total votes and tilt the balance. However, the chemistry of right-wing politics (ŗYŗP, DEVA, Gelecek – the opposition) can easily prevent that from happening.

● The opposition can win. Opposition parties can win if they all stand as one. But the opposition is ideologically so divided that any disagreement can render them ineffective. It is at a crossroads.

● The erratic behavior of undecided voters is the real reason the opposition hasn’t yet secured victory. I call this conundrum the undecided median voter syndrome.