Turkey: AKP-MHP wins parliament, presidential vote goes to 2nd round – unofficial

• AKP-led People's Alliance collects 49.3% of parliamentary votes, musters majority with 322 MPs out of total 600
• CHP-led Nation's Alliance acquire 212 parliamentary seats, HDP-led alliance - 66
• Erdogan collects 49.3% of first-presidential votes, Kilicdaroglu gets 45.0%
• Presidential votes for Ogan surprises on upside at 5.2%
• Results are based on reporting by news agencies AA and ANKA, election authority YSK likely to unveil temporary outcome today, final results scheduled for May 19
• Unofficial results point to second round between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu
• Erdogan has advantage in runoff vote, stance of Ogan supporters hard to predict at present, in our view

The People's Alliance led by the ruling party AKP mustered majority in the parliament, while the presidential elections went to second round with inconclusive first round, according to the unofficial results of the May 14 elections by the state-run news agency AA and the private news agency ANKA when 98-99% of the ballot boxes were opened. The Supreme Council of Elections (YSK) had pledged to unveil temporary official results of the elections before midnight, but it failed to do so. The YSK continued to count votes, and its results were close to those reported by the news agencies AA and ANKA, the local broadcaster Haberturk said. The election turnout was expectedly very high at around 89%, when both domestic and overseas votes were included.

Presidential elections

According to the unofficial results by AA and ANKA, incumbent President and AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan collected 49.3-49.4% of the votes in the presidential elections as he ran for the People's Alliance, which also includes the nationalist party MHP, the small Islamist party YRP and the small nationalist BBP. Erdogan's closest rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu - the main opposition party CHP's leader and candidate of the CHP-led Nation's Alliance, gathered 45.0-45.1% of the votes. The presidential candidate of the nationalist Ancestral Alliance Sinan Ogan received 5.2-5.3% of the votes. The small centre-left Memleket Party's leader Muharrem Ince gathered 0.4% of the votes. We note that Ince pulled out of the presidential race just days before the vote, and the YSK ruled that his withdrawal from the elections will be valid for a potential second round as he missed the official deadline to withdraw so that the first-round votes for Ince will be counted.

The unofficial results showed that the presidential elections will go to a second round on May 28 as none of the candidates achieved the first-round minimum vote threshold of 50% plus one. Erdogan missed the threshold by a small margin. Some journalists pointed to the possibility that votes for Erdogan could exceed the 50% threshold when counting of overseas votes are completed as he had higher vote share among the votes abroad. When almost 60% of overseas ballot boxes were opened when this report was written, which showed a 55.6% vote share for Erdogan, and 40.9% - for Kilicdaroglu. On the other hand, the general idea of local journalists is that overseas votes will probably not be sufficient to bring victory to Erdogan in the first round. A first-round victory by Erdogan is not ruled out but seen less likely.

An inconclusive first round of the presidential elections was not surprising to markets, in our view, based on pre-election opinion surveys, but Erdogan's 4-4.5pps vote lead over Kilicdaroglu was unexpected, because most recent polls predicted Kilicdaroglu to collect more votes than Erdogan in the first round. In other words, most polling companies failed to predict the outcome of the first round. Not only Erdogan collected visibly more votes than the poll averages, but also votes for Ogan were significantly above the average poll estimates. A potential factor behind the above-forecast votes for Ogan may be related to Ince's last-minute withdrawal, in our view. Unlike our earlier prediction that Ince's withdrawal could benefit Kilicdaroglu, the unofficial results suggest that most supporters of Ince cast votes for Ogan.

Parliamentary elections

The People's Alliance collected 49.3% of the votes and mustered majority in the parliament by winning 322 out of the total 600 lawmaker posts, according to the unofficial results. The AKP received around 35.5% of the votes and sent 266 or 267 MPs to the parliament. Around 10% votes for the MHP enabled the party to win 51 seats, while the YRP won four of five seats in the parliament. The total vote share of the People's Alliance fell markedly from the previous elections in Jun 2018 due mostly to falling votes for the AKP, while the YRP's inclusion in the People's Alliance partly compensated the declining support for the AKP and also for the MHP. AKP's vote share dropped by some 7pps since the previous elections and that of the MHP - by 1pp. The MHP could be considered as a game changer in the May 14 vote because it collected much more votes than the polling companies predicted on average. We think it possible that the MHP recovered some of the votes it lost to the opposition IYI Party in recent years. Some of the nationalist voters of the IYI Party could be discontent with Kilicdaroglu's presidential candidacy and the pro-Kurdish party HDP/YSP's backing of Kilicdaroglu, in our opinion, based on the unofficial outcome of the vote.

The Nation's Alliance between the centre-left CHP and the centre-right IYI Party gathered around 35.4% of the votes and sent 212 MPs to the parliament. The Nation's Alliance also includes the small right-wing parties DEVA, DP, Gelecek and SP, which fielded their MP candidates under the lists of the CHP. The CHP won 168 seats in the parliament by collecting 25.5% of the votes. CHP's vote share increased by about 3pps from the 2018 elections. As a result, the number of MPs won the party rose by 22. It is not possible to see how much of the improvement in support for the CHP stemmed from the voters of DEVA, DP, Gelecek and SP, based on the parliamentary election outcome. Yet, we think that not all supporters of these small parties cast votes for their parties' MP candidates listed under the CHP, judging by earlier opinion surveys that suggested some improvement in CHP's rating since the previous elections. The IYI Party did not get what it hoped either. The vote share of the party was flat from the 2018 elections. We argued before that the later-resolved presidential candidate crisis within the Nation's Alliance harmed votes for the IYI Party, but polls had suggested that the IYI Party's foregone voters shifted mainly to the CHP, which was refuted by the unofficial election results.

The Labour and Freedom Alliance of the pro-Kurdish HDP/YSP and the leftist TIP sent 66 MPs to the parliament by winning 10.5% of the votes. Particularly, the HDP/YSP won 62 MPs with an 8.8% vote share, and the TIP - four MPs with 1.7%. HDP's vote share dropped by nearly 3pps, compared to the 2018 elections. Possible shift of votes from the HDP to its ally TIP falls short of explaining loss of support for the HDP since the former elections.

Two other alliances between small parties, namely the Ancestral Alliance and the Alliance of Union of Socialist Forces could not win any MP posts because votes for the alliances failed to reach the 7% parliamentary vote threshold. The Ancestral Alliance collected 2.3% of the votes, and the vote share of the latter alliance was marginal at 0.3%. None of the solo-running parties could pass the 7% parliamentary threshold either. Among them, the anti-migrant Zafer Party (ZP) had the highest vote share of around 2.2%.

WHAT IS NEXT?

Procedure at YSK

We expect that the YSK will announce temporary official results of the parliamentary and first-round presidential votes later today (May 15). The YSK will accept objections to the ballot boxes between May 15 and May 17. The YSK set May 18 as the deadline for deciding on objections. The final results of the parliamentary elections and the first round of presidential elections will be out on May 19, according to the YSK's calendar. No radical incidents were reported during the voting and vote-counting. Yet, the Nation's Alliance criticised the YSK for making some ballot boxes wait before registry in constituencies where votes for the alliance and Kilicdaroglu were on the lead. The Nation's Alliance also accused the state-run news agency AA of over-reporting Erdogan's vote share in the early hours of counting ballots by way of reporting first the results in constituencies where Erdogan is more popular. During initial hours of ballot-counting, the Nation's Alliance claimed that Kilicdaroglu led over Erdogan, but officials from the Alliance abstained from such definitive comments early in the morning when AA and ANKA reported unofficial results of nearly 99% of ballot boxes. That said, the opposition will likely challenge the election outcomes at the YSK. The People's Alliance may also file objections, especially for the presidential vote, given the small margin between Erdogan's vote share to simple majority.

Erdogan is with advantage to win second round of presidential elections

The unofficial results of the first round of presidential elections point to a runoff vote between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu on May 28. Erdogan's vote lead in the first round and the parliamentary majority won by the People's Alliance would put Kilicdaroglu in a disadvantaged position against Erdogan in a second round, in our view. Erdogan has a psychological advantage by finishing the first round in first place by a visible margin. Furthermore, we think a situation where the parliamentary majority and the presidency go to rival camps may be undesirable for swing voters so that most of them may prefer to cast votes for Erdogan instead of Kilicdaroglu.

The preference of first-round supporters of Ogan would matter for the runoff vote as well. Ogan signalled in a brief speech after the unofficial results that he and the Ancestral Alliance are open to bargaining with both sides to direct voters to either to Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu. Ogan implied that his conditions for cooperation with either side included the preservation of the Turkish ethnicity bias of the Constitution, sending around refugees back to their home country (likely referring to Syrian refugees in particular), giving up the idea that high inflation is driven by high interest rates (that Erdogan defends), and ending cooperation with the pro-Kurdish parties HDP and HUDA-PAR. The HDP supported Kilicdaroglu in the first round, while HUDA-PAR won a few number of seats in the parliament under the list of the AKP. In other words, neither the People's Alliance nor the Nation's Alliance meet Ogan's criteria for distancing themselves from Kurdish parties. Accordingly, it is hard to predict to whom Ogan supporters will cast votes in the second round, also because they may be considered as dissidents of both the government and opposition. Ogan and the Ancestral Alliance define their ideological identity as Turkish nationalist and Kemalist. Kemalism is the founding ideology of modern Turkey that was named after the country's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. One of the most important pillars of Kemalism is secularism, which makes the Ancestral Alliance closer to Kilicdaroglu, in our view. On the other hand, Turkish nationalist sentiment of Ogan supporters could see Erdogan as a better fit, especially based on the informal results of the parliamentary elections and the first round of presidential elections, suggesting some shift of nationalist votes towards Erdogan from Kilicdaroglu, in our view.