Assessment of the Second Round

On May 14, 2023, I made an evaluation on the votes cast for the presidency in the elections held on those days. 

https://strasam.org/stratejisiyaset/siyaset-bilimi/secmen-sayisi-sebep-oranlar-ise-neticedir-1990

As a continuation of that assessment, let us examine the results of the May 28, 2023 elections and close this topic.

The YSK has announced the final results in Turkey and abroad, as well as at customs gates, as of June 1st.

If we make a comparison with the results in my previous assessment, we can say that we reach the following conclusions.

First of all, the number of voters increased from 64 million 145 thousand 504 voters to 64 million 197 thousand 454 voters in the two-week election period.

The difference is 51 thousand 950 voters. This difference should be the difference between those who turned 18 in these two weeks and became eligible to vote and those who could not vote due to death or other reasons. 

Since the result is not negative, we can say that the number of young voters who became eligible to participate in the elections in two weeks was high enough.

In proportions, we get a rate of 8 per 10,000, which is 4 per 10,000 per week, and this rate, which we can call 2.1% per year in 52 weeks, is not much higher than our average annual population growth rate of 1.61% in the last five years.

In other words, this increase in the number of voters is acceptable if we take into account seasonal effects (maybe birth rates are much higher in this season than in other seasons of the year!

If we are in agreement on this, let us now turn to the comparisons with the values in our previous article. 

I will not deal with the voter turnout in this round. I will directly compare the number of valid votes in the first round with the number of valid votes in the second round and the number of votes received by both candidates in both rounds.

In the first round, the total number of valid votes was 54 million 796 thousand 49.

In the second round, the total number of valid votes was 53 million 339 thousand 313.

The difference is 1 million 456 thousand 736 votes.

This means that no matter how much campaigning was done to get out to vote, around 2.7% of the voters did not go to the polls in the second round. 

In the first article, if you read that article, in one of the options I did the calculation by saying what would happen if the vote loss was around 10%.

2.7% loss of votes is well below my estimate of the maximum possible loss of votes, so we can say that the campaigns really worked.

So let's talk about the votes received by the candidates.

The 27 million 133 thousand 849 votes Mr. Erdoğan received in the first round increased to 27 million 834 thousand 589 votes in the second round!

The difference is 700 thousand 740 votes. In other words, even though the voter turnout decreased, Mr. Erdoğan both preserved the votes he received in the first round and added 700 thousand votes!

Let's make this analysis for Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu and then try to evaluate it.

Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu's first round vote was 24 million 595 thousand 178. By the way, I am taking these votes from my first article, as far as I know, unfortunately the YSK has not yet published the final results of the first round of the presidential elections.

In the second round, Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu received 25 million 504 thousand 724 votes and increased his votes by 909 thousand 546 votes.

Naturally, since Mr. Erdoğan received more votes than Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round, Mr. Erdoğan won the election.

While the difference in votes between the two candidates was 2,796,49 in the first round, it decreased to 2,329,865 in the second round, but this decrease was still not enough.

Even if all the voters who did not go to the polls in the second round had gone to the polls, that is, even if Mr. Kılıçdaroğlu had received all 1 million 456 thousand 736 votes, Mr. Erdoğan would have won the election in any case!

Then I think the problem is something else. 

No matter how much positive campaigning you do, even if you make a 180-degree turn between the two rounds and change the language of the campaign to a racist one in order to get nationalist votes, Mr. Erdoğan's voters believe and trust him.

No matter how much he deceives and deceives his voters, if necessary, he reaches his voters by defaming you in the election campaign, even if it is a montage or a lie, and he knows how to win the election.

Even an empty pot is not enough to oust him from power.

So the opposition is doing something wrong. No matter what it does, it cannot convince people.

Six tables, representatives from all segments of society, all these promises. No, it's all a waste of breath. 

People just don't believe, and knowing the situation the country is in, they go and vote for Mr. Erdoğan in the ballot box. 

In this process, if the opposition can't figure out where it went wrong, if it can't reach out to people and explain itself better, if it can't convince people that this course is wrong, I don't think it has a chance of winning any elections.

Yes, modern Turkey! Turkey, which should have progressed on the path shown by Atatürk and reached the level of contemporary civilizations, has gone back perhaps a century in the hands of the government.

But come and tell this to the people!

If an investment is to be made, it should be made not for the next five years, but for the next fifty years, a hundred years! And this investment must be explained to people in the right way!

Love and regards to everyone from Moscow