Public Strategy said the telephone surveys of about 1,000 registered Republican voters showed Bentley leading with 53 percent of the vote and Byrne at 33 percent.
My first response is to take the numbers with a grain of salt given the radically low turn-out for run-offs in Alabama (it is likely to be in the single digits), meaning that predicting who will turn-out to vote is tricky. Still, I would rather be Bentley than Byrne with the numbers above.
The interesting thing is that Byrne won the first round (although, granted, narrowly) and for the longest time Bentley was considered quite the longshot to even make the run-off, let alone win the nomination.
Bentley is the more conservative of the two candidates, which clearly works to his advantage. His pledge not to take a salary until Alabama is fully employed is likely playing quite well given the economic climate.
One of the thing that struck me was that at first glance (I need to actually do some checking to confirm my impression), the voto en blanco numbers aren’t especially high. This is noteworthy, as the Polo was actively campaigning for the voto en blanco. Of course, if one is going to officially abstain, the motivation to stay home and watch the Mundial is probably pretty high.
As I noted in passing yesterday, this victory is of historic proportions.
Of course, exactly placing in its proper context is another issue, as not all historical periods are created equal. Going backwards we can understand the basic eras of Colombian presidential elections as follows:
The Absolute Majority Era (1994-2010). With the implementation of the Constitution of 1991, it became necessary to win an absolute majority of the vote to be the president of Colombia. If no candidate received an absolute majority, a run-off (like the one held yesterday) has to be held. This applies to the elections of 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010. Of those, a run-off was required in all save 2002 and 2006 (Uribe’s two wins). It should also be noted that from 1994-2002, a one-term limit was in place, but the constitution was amended to allow for two terms during Uribe’s first administration.
The Plurality Era (1974-1990). The basics here are that the presidency was won by the candidate with the most votes on election day and non-consecutive re-election was allowed. The constitution of 1886 governed these elections.
The National Front Era (1958-1970). As a condition of a pact signed by the (then) major political parties (the Liberals and Conservatives), the presidency would alternate between the two parties every four years. Elections would still be held, but the party whose turn it was would submit an official candidate and the other party would not. Dissident candidates could run, but with the exception of he 1970 contest, such challenges were relatively insignificant. The pact in question was in response to a partisan civil war in the 1940s and 50s and a military government that briefly ruled (1953-1958).
Early 20th Century/pre-coup period. This period has a number of sub-periods that I won’t get into here. This was an era of limited suffrage elections, uncontested elections and other issues that make the period not especially useful for comparison to the current era.
Having spelled all of that out, where does Santos’ election fit, in term of comparative numbers?
If we look at the most comparable era (i.e., #1), the next biggest percentage win was Uribe’s 62.35% in 2006. In some ways, that number is more impressive than Santos’ as Uribe won his in the first round against six challengers. In the other two cases (1994 and 1998) the second rounds were quite competitive.
If we look at the pre-1991 constitution period (#2 above), the biggest winner was Virgilio Barco (PL) in 1986, who won 58.36% of the vote.
If we go back to the NF era (#3), the remarkable thing is that even with the restricted nature of the races during that time, only two of the four elections gave the winner a more impressive final percentage than the one Santos won yesterday.
In the first NF election (1958), Alberto Lleras won 80.14% of the vote against token opposition and in 1962, Carlos Llera won 71.72% of the vote. The 1962 winner, Guillermo León Valencia won 62.30% and in the highly contested and controversial 1970 election Misael Pastrana won only 40.69% of the vote (with, likely, a little extralegal help, shall we say).
So, in sum, to put Santos’ win into perspective: it is the most impressive win in terms of numbers of any fully competitive election in Colombian history (i.e, from 1974 onward). Further, it is an even more impressive win than two of four elections held under less than fully competitive circumstances during the NF.
Here’s a better map than the one I posted yesterday, as it has the names of the departments noted:
I have been otherwise occupied by a very lovely Father’s Day thanks to my wife and kids (especially my wife!) so, no blogging about the elections until now.
Here are the results: a crushing defeat for Mockus:
While it was pretty clear that Santos was going to win after almost winning outright in the first round, I must confess I thought Mockus would at least break 30%. This is the most lop-sided presidential election in Colombian history when an actual contest was taking place (for example, in 1950 there was no real election, not to mention the National Front period, that I am not going to get into at the moment).
Mockus managed to win only one department, that of Putumayo (where he won 55.11% of the vote):
Starting at 8am this morning and until 4pm, voters will have the chance to choose the next president of Colombia. Barring an upset of historical proportions, that president will be former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos of the the Party of National Social Unity (La U).
If one is interested in a visual run-down of what election day in Colombia is more or less like, one can consult the following series of photos I took during the March congressional elections: 10,000 Words on the Jornada Electoral (the photos are in chronological order).
Rick Barber was the second place finisher in the AL02 contest to run as the Republican against incumbent Bobby Bright in November. He is likely to lose to Martha Robey during said run-off in July based on the numbers from the primary:
Barber is the Tea Party candidate in the race and has been part of the overall Alabama goes viral YouTube commercial fest (see here, here and here for examples and further explanation).
Here’s his latest:
BTW, Barber ends the commercial with "You gentlemen revolted over a tea tax. A tea tax!! and now look at us!" However, I would note, that is not historically correct. While the Boston Tea Party (as it came to be known in the 19th Century) was one of several events that predated the war for independence, it was by no means the proximate cause for the conflict, let alone the move for independence. Indeed, the specific protest was against the tax breaks given to the East India Company (see this article at History.net: Debunking Boston Tea Party Myths).
He appeals to Washington as the owner of a distillery who "knows how tough it is to run a small business without a tyrannical government on your back." But President Washington presided over, and approved, the first tax levied by the federal government — the 1791 whiskey tax. When the tax met resistance, he approved the assembling of militias to enforce the law and mobilization of agents to collect the revenue. So the Barber daydream of Washington angrily ordering a "gathering of armies" to oppose a tax is… well, entertaining, I guess.
Barber’s previous ad is here, wherein he rants about Islam and the mosque that has been proposed near Ground Zero in New York:
BTW, he claim about the mosque opening on September 11, 2011 strike me as unlikely to be true. While it was reported as such in a NY Postpiece, the notion that a building as complex as the proposed Cordoba House will likely take more than just over a year to complete. The statement that the building would open on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 seems like it is too perfect for the narrative in question to be true.
Over the weekend, Germán Vargas Lleras, former presidential candidate and leader of Radical Change (Cambio Radical, a.k.a., CR) publically proclaimed an alliance with Juan Manuel Santos of La U.
Vargas won 10.13% of the vote in the first round and Conservative candidate Noemí Sanín won 6.14% (source). Combined with Santos, this bloc won 62.83% of the first round. While the second round cannot be expected to directly replicate the first that summed total is not that far off the polling figures I noted yesterday.
The PC and CR are both major uribista parties in the overall panoply of Colombian parties and were part of the pro-government coalition along with La U and several smaller parties over the last four years. They, no doubt, plan to occupy that position during the seemingly certain Santos administration. Further, one would expect that some of the former presidential candidates from these parties will find themselves with positions in a Santos administration.
On the other side of the ledger, Mockus has not been able/willing to amass a second-round coalition. Indeed, immediately after the first round, Mockus announced that the plan was to target those who didn’t vote in the first round rather than to try and form alliances with other parties.
Indeed, the president of the Polo (Clara López.) has said that Santos and Mockus “have the the same politics” (source) and therefore the party cannot support either.
The other potential coalition partner was the Liberal Party, and the official position of the party has been that it would support no one in the second round (see the PL’s website).
An opinion poll by Centro Nacional de Consultoria — which interviewed 2,000 people and had a margin of error of 2.1 percentage points — found that Santos would get 60.8 percent of the vote on June 20 versus Mockus’ 28.3 percent.
The survey — published in the El Tiempo newspaper — followed another poll by Invamer Gallup that found Santos with a nearly 40-point lead in the second round.
None of which is too surprising given the results of the first round. Santos was within shouting distance of win to start with and many of the votes that went to defeated parties like Cambio Radical, the Conservatives and the Liberals are all likely to go to to Santos. Further, Mockus has formed no political alliance going into the second round.
