as people have noted, this blog can proudly boast of an excellent track record of correctly predicting outcomes of electoral, political, military, and economic, events. in this post, i will explain why upfa candidate, mahinda rajapaksa would win the sri lankan presidential election to be held on 8th january 2015, using reason, and facts and figures. in another post tomorrow, i hope to argue why he should win according to my political opinion. but this post is based on calculations, not opinions.
like the similar post i made before the 2010 presidential election, i will demonstrate why mahinda will win, mainly by demolishing the electoral vote calculations advanced by supporters of his opponent, so called common opposition candidate, maithripala sirisena of ndf.
however, before that, i will use another way of looking at this. that is
to consider the differences between 2010 election and this one
differences between 2010 election and this one.
what in fact are the differences? and how would they affect the outcome?
then and now, unp and main minority racist parties are supporting opposition candidate. no difference. fact that both tna and unp grass roots are largely indifferent is true, then and now.
if anything, given the lower profile of unp leadership around sirisena, and higher profile of all sort of fringe politicians like chandrika and rajitha, apathy among unpers is greater.
some "old guard" slfp politicians are switching sides, or are lukewarm to mahinda and his campaign. but most of them are mediocre colorless figures (like sirisena himself) and cannot transfer votes in any material way.
more racist muslim leaders in opposition camp than in 2010. good for maithree, but not by much. more on this below.
jvp did most of the grass root work for sarath fonseka. this time it is sitting it out and only extending tacit support, as well as basically hiring out cadres. not good for maithree.
top leaders of jhu has switched sides but not the grass roots, and party is imploding as we write. in any case it was more an ideology, rather than a mass party.
perhaps the main difference is the length of mahinda's rule, and inevitable slow erosion of popularity. but recent minor elections do not indicate this has reached significant levels needed for his defeat.
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these differences are not significant enough to change the election result.
now for my main calculation.
trashing opposition's electoral vote calculations
unlike last time, this time maithree supporters have not advanced detailed faux projections as to why maithree would win, confining themselves to broad generalizations.
they argue that since sirisena will get minority vote, splitting a significant portion of the sinhala buddhist vote, even if it is a minority among them, will result in a maithree victory. last time too, they made the same claim, and rational people pointed out (i too in a separate post) that this is a mere racist myth and far from reality. since obviously they are still living in mythical realms, i will remake my point.
in the most fantastical and most widespread version, they assert that unless mahinda gets 72% of sinhala buddhists, he is lost. where do they get this 72%? they get it by dividing 50% (majority needed to win) by 70% (proportion of sinhala buddhists in population). absurdity of this calculation should be obvious to anyone with any brains, but at least 2 of the main campaigners for sirisena (rajitha senaratne, mangala samaraweera) and variety of others, including some editorial writers, have used this 72% number.
this, and even less absurd versions of the same argument, assume several blatant falsehoods as truth.
1/ that all, or vast majority, of all minorities will vote against mahinda.
2/ that 4 main minority groups (sri lankan tamils, upcountry(indian) tamils, muslims, sinhala catholics) that make up roughly 30% of sri lankan population, are similar to each other in their voting behavior, and there are no conflicts between them.
3/ that their primary criteria for voting for a candidate is based on alleged interests (as propagated by racist and religious ideologues) of their race and/or religion, rather than their personal, family, gender, security, economic, professional, and other, interests.
4/ that each of the 4 groups are homogeneous internally, without differing, and sometimes conflicting, regional, religious, class, caste, etc, etc, groups within them.
5/ that these primarily racially motivated (as this opposition claim assumes, see above) minorities will turnout on election day to choose between 2 sinhala buddhists in same numbers as sinhala buddhists, since otherwise their vote percentage of total votes will fall below 30%.
6/ that sinhala buddhists are either,
(a) not motivated by racial/religious interests, unlike minorities,
or (b) they are easily hoodwinked into splitting, and voting against their racial/religious interests (and for racial/religious interests of minorities), by merely giving them an alternative sinhala buddhist candidate.
all these assumptions, essential to success of sirisena, are false. and some of them can only be assumed by contemptible racists.
i will now examine the reality, and make conservative estimates of votes mahinda will likely to get from various groups.
likely vote splits among minorities
past records indicate that vote share from any ethnic/religious group, for one party/candidate, in a contested election, rarely exceed 75% of total votes of that group, if ever. in this election such a figure is unlikely from any of the main minority groups.
of the 4 groups, only the sri lankan tamils, led by racist party tna, are likely to give sirisena anything like a 70-75%+ majority, if that. whatever the vote split of sl tamils, there are reasons to think that they are less engaged than other sri lankans with this election, which will reduce their share of total sri lankan vote. last week i opined that tna's decision to overtly(rather than tacitly) support for sisrisena was due to apathy of their supporters.
muslim votes, and politicians, are usually split more evenly. last presidential election is a case in point. racist parties like slmc, and others, that claim to control muslim votes have in fact no track record to prove that claim. however, various observers claim that so called "riots" in aluthgama etc, in 2014 will result in a more pronounced anti mahinda vote from muslims. existence and strength of anti mahinda sentiment due to aluthgama incidents (which have no direct connection to mahinda personally, while some politicians, who are allegedly connected more closely, are now supporting maithree) is doubtful given that none of the muslim politicians felt it necessary to break with mahinda at the time. anyway, let us crush my doubts, and assume these others are right about this sentiment among muslims, and instead of 60/40 split against mahinda, i assumed in 2010 (and actual muslim vote of 50/50 at least then) let us assume a 66/33 split against mahinda among muslims this time.
upcountry(indian) tamil votes going against mahinda is unlikely without a last minute change of sides on the part of cwc leadership. unlike muslim parties, cwc has a proven track record of delivering votes. without last minute (now highly unlikely) surprises, actual vote split among upcountry tamil vote is likely to be 60/40 for mahinda, at the very least. but let us be conservative and prudent, and assume it is 50/50 against him.
sinhala catholic vote in recent years have in fact gone for upfa and mahinda by a slight majority. look at past votes in mostly suburban electorates on the coastal belt to north of colombo (with the exception of negombo town itself, which votes a slight majority against him, not unlike non catholic urban electorates elsewhere btw). there is no reason whatsoever to think this is going to change. as such this vote is going to be 50/50, with even a probable slight majority for mahinda. but let as be conservative and assume it is 55-60/45-40 against mahinda.
now let us add up these conservative estimates for minority votes. let us conservatively accept the 30% population figure for minorities, with no drop in turnout;
with sri lankan tamils(7%-), upcountry(indian) tamils(7%+), muslims(9%+), sinhala catholics(7%-).
now split the respective percentage populations maithree/mahinda according to my assumptions above;
5/2, 3.5/3.5, 6/3, 4/3.
now total them;
((5+3.5+6+4)/(2+3.5+3+3)).
that is 18.5% for maithree, and 11.5% for mahinda of total 30% minority votes.
in the interest of space and clarity, i am dismissing the internal splits in each group and between the minority groups. effects of most of which are likely to add to mahinda vote tally. however i will give an example of what i am referring by pointing out that a main political concern of tamil catholics in mannar have been settlement of muslims in that district under the patronage of former minister rishad bathiudeen. who is now in sirisena camp.
sinhala buddhist vote split
with mahinda getting more than 11%+ of minority 30% of population, instead of 72% of sinhala buddhist votes, he need only 55% ((50-11.5)/70) of sinhala buddhist vote to get 50% of total votes.
this is a certainty.
this is a certainty.
his party, upfa, without him on ballot, got 58%-68% votes in electorates where there are no significant minorities, in recent provincial elections. note that upfa got that, even in cases where upfa's mediocre non charismatic chief minister candidates went against charismatic unp chief minister candidates. with jhu staying away from vote, and muslims contesting separately.
in contrast to provincial elections, in presidential election, upfa candidate is clearly more charismatic and personally popular.
mahinda has a better funded, much better organization, that is directly controlled by his campaign, rather than party. not to mention authority due to him as incumbent.
sirisena is highly dependent on local conditions in each electorate for lower level organization, and a varied bunch of disagreeing politicians at top level for funding and control.
he must rely on uncertain support of local unp organizers and others. both unp and slfp politics are based on patronage networks. it is doubtful whether lower level unp leaders would go out of their way to elect sirisena when he is not part of their patronage network, nor the alternative slfp one to which they can switch. with a few exceptions, most of them seem to be doing a bare minimum for his campaign. this is actually very similar to 2010, when unp at grass root level did very little for fonseka. most of the grass root work, as i and others noted at the time, was done by jvp.
he must rely on uncertain support of local unp organizers and others. both unp and slfp politics are based on patronage networks. it is doubtful whether lower level unp leaders would go out of their way to elect sirisena when he is not part of their patronage network, nor the alternative slfp one to which they can switch. with a few exceptions, most of them seem to be doing a bare minimum for his campaign. this is actually very similar to 2010, when unp at grass root level did very little for fonseka. most of the grass root work, as i and others noted at the time, was done by jvp.
this time jvp is sitting it out, extending only tacit support for reasons of its own, and in some cases basically hiring out its grass roots cadre for money to sirisena.
meanwhile, jhu is imploding and has lost all credibility.
meanwhile, jhu is imploding and has lost all credibility.
due to all these factors, it would be easy for mahinda to post around 60% among sinhala buddhists, well in excess of 55%, at most, required for victory.
as such, i predict, conservatively, that mahinda would likely get more (probably much more) than 52% of total votes. which would mean a 5%+ margin of victory over maithree, at a minimum.
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