The 2015 election: final review

The good thing about landslides is that detailed study of vote movement is not necessary nor possible since the anger vote is difficult to assess and predict for the future. In democratic countries this is not really an issue: Mauritius had once a 100% district parliament win fort a single party and it never stopped being a democracy. Thus after reviewing the highlights we may try to summarize the whole thing.

I reviewed the worst chavista defeats, the crown jewel falling to the opposition in full, the ill fate of the dissidents, the division in the new majority. For further details Tal Cual has a nice graph about the MUD growth in each district from 2010 to 2015. So let's summarize a few points.

Below is the update of the Caucaguita graph including Sunday 6 result.

Caucaguita went to the opposition and thus the help it supposed to be for chavismo in the gerrymandering did not work out. As reader Boludo Tejano pointed out, that gerrymandering does not work does not mean "it blew up in your face". Though in Barinas it was a clear case of such thing: the newly drawn three seats district could have gone only one or two for opposition before but went down all three. Another infamously redrawn district, Valencia South, went all three seats for the opposition.

What is interesting in the Caucaguita numbers above is that the opposition growth followed its old pattern: the vote to punish Maduro only played a role in that the opposition went above chavismo when in projection it should have been slightly below. There is the bad news for chavismo: there was an anger vote but there was also growing opposition vote. Which one is which will be revealed over the next years, but the trend was there even if in some states the MUD vote had truly circumstantial "angry voter" jumps.

The angry vote as it explained anything was the extreme polarization of the country. Third party candidates fared particularly bad. You were for Maduro or you were not. And let's not forget that a significant portion of the Maduro vote was out of fear. Had elections be free we may be talking today of a National Assembly Mauritius style. Yet, this uncertainty about how much of its gains are real should give pause to the MUD as it must find ways to retain enough of this angry vote to retain a parliamentary majority in the future. The upcoming CNE will probably eliminate the gerrymandering of the currently chavista controlled CNE and future 2/3 majorities cannot be counted upon again.

Another lesson should be taken away from these elections: the electoral fraud of chavismo may be everywhere but at vote counting time it only works if turnout is rather low. From all information we can listen to, if there are possible local vote padding, those were ineffective. True, the electoral fraud actually takes place BEFORE the vote by making it impossible for the opposition to campaign effectively. But we hope that from today on the campaign in pro of abstention will be finally silenced and redirected to fight pre-election fraud.

In the end the strategy of the opposition to do nothing and wait for the elections worked ONLY because the economy got worse than anyone expected. Thus at this point trying to figure out the effect of Leopoldo Lopez protest of 2014 and subsequent martyrdom cannot be evaluated out of the vote itself. Yet I propose that the spectacular sweep of Caracas by the opposition owes something to Leopoldo (and Maria Corina and Ledezma). His Caracas protest and the locally felt regime's overboard reactions have energized the opposition there even though people like Capriles poo-pooed it.

We thus got a 2/3 majority which contrary to the pessimist crowd I think should hold long enough to pass key decisions that will affect future electoral contests. One is the renewal of the electoral board CNE. Another one is to remove part of the censorship that affects election campaigns. With this the material advantage of the regime at election time will be lowered considerably. If we can get at least that much next year, and I trust we will, then this election would have been worth it just for that, for allowing the return of a real political debate that may avoid a civil war.

Finally, when we look at the results in some details there is no way to hide the unmitigated disaster the vote was for the regime even if it tries to disguise the disaster by, well, ignoring it. Even though the PSUV held "primaries", even though it did manage to spread a few goodies at the last minute, two years of long lines under the sun and rain have done the regime a permanent damage. And it seems that all hell is about to break lose inside chavismo. Let's not forget that when such a mass movement finds itself so degraded is when it can become more dangerous and bring more harm than ever. Or peter out fast. Let's hope for the alter.