Election Analysis #1

Pathways to Victory

It’s only 20 days to election day! Here’s a countdown clock, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ve been doing some talks on the ways the elections might unfold, so I thought I’d give you a brief summary of my thoughts here.

I’d first like to highlight how unique this electoral process is going to be. In most countries, electoral rules don’t change very often, so people can game out how things are likely to unfold and prepare accordingly (the importance of the Iowa caucuses, etc.) Turkey’s system changed radically in 2017, and again, significantly in 2022. The 2018 presidential race also didn’t go into a runoff, so we don’t know what those are like. We’ve never been in a dynamic where the opposition is polling as far ahead as it is today. We’ve never had an election where a transition of power would be tantamount to regime change, so we don’t know how the government/regime might behave. All this makes the current dynamic very difficult to predict.

Let’s try and do it anyways.

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