Incumbent party's fall has begun

In my piece last Monday, just after the elections, I started an analysis based on a vote distribution that, a few days later, was revealed as biased.
Its light might be weakening On Sunday night, the majority of TV news stations reported their election statistics based on information provided by the Anadolu news agency, a state-owned company. Nevertheless, we knew quite soon that the statistics were biased in favor of the incumbent party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Sunday night's vote distribution considered for my piece was as follows: In percentage of votes, the AKP won 45 percent, the Republican People's Party (CHP) won 28 percent and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) won 16 percent. Now, the unofficial but almost definitive vote distribution at the national level was reported by the Cihan news agency as follows: The AKP won 43.3 percent, the CHP won 25.6 percent, the MHP won 17.7 percent and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the People's Democracy Party (HDP) together won 6.6 percent. Most of my foreign readers who might not be very familiar with the nuances of the Turkish electoral system may say that there are only a few differences between the two vote distributions. They are mistaken. The second vote distribution, the correct one, allows us to be much more optimistic regarding the political consequences of the outcome of March 30. The main point to be underlined is that the incumbent party has lost approximately 6.5 percentage points compared to the last elections in June 2011, in which its vote share was 49.8 percent. In absolute terms, the AKP has lost more than 2 million electors. The second point is that the large majority of these electors voted for the MHP. The vote share of this right-wing party has increased by 4.8 percentage points, from 12.9 to 17.7 percent. The remaining electors lost by the AKP seem to have voted for the Islamist Felicity Party (SP), which increased its vote share from 2 to 2.8 percent, and for the Grand Unity Party (BBP), another right-wing party, which increased its vote share from 0.8 to 1.6 percent. It must be noted that the main opposition party, the CHP, almost stagnated with 25.6 percent; they won 25.9 percent of the vote in June 2011. The pro-Kurdish party, the BDP, also stagnated with 6.6 percent. The electors who voted on March 30 will vote again this August to elect the president of the Turkish Republic and later in June 2015 to elect the deputies for the National Assembly. The critical question regarding the political evolution in the near future is: Will the AKP be able to win back the electors it has lost to the right-wing parties? To answer this question we need to know what pushed these electors away from the AKP. We will have a reliable answer from the elections surveys, which will scrutinize these motivates. That said, I can share with you my personal answer as based on the predictions of Professor Ali Akarca's econometric model, which I referenced in my article last Saturday, "What will Erdoğan decide?" If there are no major fluctuations caused by deep crises like the “clean hands” projects of Italy in 1994 and Turkey in 2001, the incumbent party will face the next elections while keeping more than 80 percent of its vote share in the previous elections. This means that the AKP will start the next general elections, which will be held within a year, with 40 percent in its pocket. Then, five factors will decide the final support of the incumbent party: the cost of ruling; the advantage of incumbency; economic conditions, especially GDP growth; political realignment in terms of a consolidation of conservative votes in the incumbent party; and strategic voting in terms of refusal to vote for the first choice because of the 10 percent electoral threshold. Let's start with GDP growth. Last year the growth rate reached 4 percent and this year the rate will be the same, at best. The vote consolidation process is over. In other words, the incumbent party has no more electors to attract from the right. Maybe it can gain back 1 percentage point because of strategic voting from the SP and the BBP. The electors it would lose because of the cost of ruling might be compensated by the electors who would vote for it because of the incumbency advantage. The bottom line is that I do not believe the AKP will be able to get back the large majority of the electors it lost. This fact has major political consequences: First, the AKP is now unable to have the referendum majority of more than 330 seats, even if it changes the electoral system by narrowing the constituencies. Thus, the presidential system dream of Mr. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is definitely buried. Will he accept resigning from his party and become a president with limited prerogatives? If he accepts these conditions, who will be the prime minister? Would this new prime minister be able to lead the AKP efficiently, as Mr. Erdoğan does, in the next general elections? If Mr. Erdoğan decides to remain in his post as prime minister and leader of the AKP, who will be the AKP candidate in the presidential elections? If it is Mr. Abdullah Gül, the current president -- and it most probably will be -- can Mr. Erdoğan share executive power with Mr. Gül, who would be, this time around, elected by popular vote, thus having more political power? No doubt the incumbent party's fall has begun, and it is facing harsh dilemmas.