An uphill battle

Amidst rumours of massive fraud, the second round of the elections will be held on May 28. It is an uphill battle for Kılıçdaroğlu. There are many statistical anomalies in the first round, but this has always been so. Maybe he lost big time or maybe there have been some anomalies that defy reason in the first round but the second round is uphill nonetheless.

MHP is on the run since 1969. Still works? After years of ineffective opposition, he spearheaded a popular front but no avail

In particular, did the nationalist party MHP gather over 10% of votes really? This was totally unexpected. Electoral studies estimate its trend vote, in a sense also its irreducible core, at 8%. Where did the other votes come from? As a mirror image the Kurdish party (YSP) is about 2-2.5% below its trend vote. Is it because TİP (Turkey’s Workers Party) entered the election party independently and cut the support base of YSP? In toto, the Left and YSP secured only 10.5%.

Perhaps nationalism has been truly on the rise. It is mixed with religious feelings. Or perhaps something ‘hard to explain’ and ‘hard to predict’ has happened. It is also notable that until 11.19 PM the official data stream showed Kilicdaroğlu ahead, but the presidential race results turned around in a couple of hours when official data stopped pouring.

If what was going on at around midnight was suspicious, the opposition should have immediately objected to whatever was going on after 11.19 PM on that day. Instead, the information technology network of the opposition centre was in chaos, and somehow the opposition couldn’t process raw data that reached the centre.

Was this an incredible instance of incredulity? Are there reasons other than incompetence? We don’t know but both the propaganda team and the technology team of the main opposition party CHP are gone now. They have been laid off the next day. λThe second round will be fought with a different ideological language and with different propaganda and IT teams in charge. This may be seen as tacit admission that not only the IT centre didn’t function properly but also that the opposition’s propaganda strategy failed. λIf the incumbent bloc won the first round with a large difference, and this is what the MP distribution shows today, then it would be impossible to win the presidency in the second round. λRather, all efforts are perhaps directed towards preventing a huge defeat in the second round. Should this happen, nobody would care about the first round’s statistical anomalies. Perhaps all the opposition can aspire to achieve is not to lose with a very large margin. λRight-wing authoritarian populisms are on the rise everywhere

Piketty & Goldhammer, Capital and Ideology (2020: 492), 1980-2020: the loss of the social compact.