Elections this weekend

No time to dive too deeply into this week’s elections, but three elections this weekend around the world.

First, Greece. Greece has the honor of being the first country to appear twice in this series, as the previous Greek election has held a mere five weeks ago. Why a new election is already occurring can be answered in my previous post.

Based on the polling, it looks a fairly uninteresting status quo election, with New Democracy likely to retain their modest majority and political control. However! There have been changes in the electoral system that will make it more difficult to obtain an outright majority. In 2016, Syriza changed the electoral system to a simple proportional system, which effectively means a party needs roughly 46-47% to win an outright parliamentary majority. In 2020, New Democracy passed laws returning Greece to a “reinforced proportionality” system with a substantial seat bonus for the leading party, meaning the largest party likely only needs around 39% to win an outright majority. However, under the Greek constitution, while the electoral system can be changed with a simple parliamentary majority, those changes do not take effect until after the next election. In order to make changes for the next election, a 2/3 supermajority is required, which New Democracy did not obtain. (The same rule and situation applied to Syriza’s change in 2016, making tomorrow’s election the only one that will take place under the 2016 election laws.) As New Democracy does not appear to have any obvious coalition partners, there is some fear that this election, while appearing to be status quo-reinforcing in the vote totals, this election will produce a hung parliament. This would lead, in all likelihood, to another election in July, but under the 2020 laws, which would give New Democracy a much better chance of obtaining a parliamentary majority with current levels of electoral support

This is exactly what happened. New Democracy overperformed polls but still came up 5 seats short of a majority in May, and by all accounts didn’t try to hard to figure out a coalition, as they knew a redo would give them a clean majority, so here we are. Early results are showing a very slight reduction in their vote share of just over 40%, but 157 seats, eleven more than May and 6 more than needed for a governing majority.

Sierra Leone: Today will see a rematch of the 2018 presidential election, where Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party defeated Samura Kamara of the All People’s Congress by under 4%. This will likely require a run-off, as there are a bunch of minor candidates and a first round win in Sierra Leone requires 55%. The scant coverage of this election suggests Bio may be on his heels in this election, due to widespread dissatisfaction with and significant protests about the generally grim economic situation facing the country. Also noteworthy is a significant change on the legislative side of this election; Sierra Leone is switching from single member district, first past the post to multi-member proportional representation. This electoral change was made by presidential decree in October, and affirmed by the Supreme Court in January. Voting took place yesterday; we’re just waiting for results now.

Guatemala: Alejandro Giammattei, the conservative incumbent, is constitutionally barred from running for re-election, which probably wouldn’t have mattered all that much as he is wildly unpopular and his party is polling in low single digits. Polling suggests 3 candidates hovering around 15-22%; the top two of which will compete in an August run-off. The nominal polling leader is Sandra Torres, a former first lady who advanced to the second round and lost to her more conservative opponents in 2015 and 2019. (She spent some time under house arrest for campaign finance violations following the 2019 election.) She’s running under the banner of a center-left party, and campaigning on increased cash transfers to the poor. In a close second place in the polling is Edmond Mulet, an older career diplomat representing a new party with no current representation in congress, running on, per the NYT write-up “universal pension, increasing police salaries and building a new high-security prison.” Running a close 3rd is Zury Rios. If that name alarms you, it should: she is the daughter of the former general and vile, genocidal war criminal Efrain Rios Montt, whose genocidal war crimes she predictably denies. I have no idea who’d make a better president for Guatemala between Torres and Mulet, but the obvious rooting interest for all decent people everywhere is for the two of them to finish above Rios, keeping her off the August ballot. NYT writeup here.

Based on the wikipedia entry I’ve been relying on to keep track of elections, this series will be on haitus for four weeks, until Spain and Cambodia hold national elections on July 23. If there’s any other election in July (special, local, whatever) that you think is interesting enough to warrant my attention, feel free to put your case for it in comments or drop me a line.