Ciao!: My quick count (and some interpretations)

My quick count (and some interpretations)

07.06.2006

Technorati tags: Bolivia politics elections

While vote counting continues, we're close to knowing the likely seat count for the recently elected Bolivian constituent assembly. Several Bolivian papers published projected seat counts on Monday (the day after the election), but those numbers have dramatically changed. So I've gone to the Corte Nacional Electoral website (www.cne.org.bo) myself to look at their data. They've now got 95% of votes counted, w/ final tallies in four of nine departments & most of the "uninominal" districts.

"Plurinominal" districts are the department-wide districts. Each department has five plurinominal seats; two seats to the winner, one seat to the next runners-up (but seats are awarded only to electoral lists that pass a 5% threshold). "Uninominal" districts correspond to the uninominal electoral districts used to elect representatives to parliament in single-seat, plurality-winner districts. In the constituent assembly election, these districts were each awarded three seats; two to the winner, the remainder to the second-place list.

Here's my tally, by department:

Chuquisaca
MAS - 2 plurinominal; 12 uninominal
Podemos - 1 plurinominal; 4 uninominal
MBL - 1 plurinominal; 2 uninominal
CN - 1 plurinominal

La Paz
MAS - 2 plurinominal; 30 uninominal
Podemos - 1 plurinominal; 6 uninominal
UN - 1 plurinominal; 5 uninominal
ASP - 1 plurinominal; 1 uninominal
CN - 2 uninominal
AYRA - 1 uninominal

Cochabamba
MAS - 3 plurinominal; 20 uninominal
Podemos - 1 plurinominal; 5 uninominal
UN - 1 plurinominal
MBL - 5 uninominal

Oruro
MAS - 3 plurinominal; 10 uninominal
Podemos - 1 plurinominal; 2 uninominal
CN - 1 plurinominal; 1 uninominal
MCSFA - 1 uninominal
AYRA - 1 uninominal

Potosí
MAS - 2 plurinominal; 16 uninominal
Podemos - 1 plurinominal; 3 uninominal
AS - 1 plurinominal; 3 uninominal
MOP - 1 plurinominal; 2 uninominal

Tarija
MAS - 2 plurinominal; 8 uninominal
MNR - 1 plurinominal; 7 uninominal
Podemos -1 plurinominal
MIR -1 plurinominal

Santa Cruz
MAS - 2 plurinominal; 20 uninominal
Podemos -1 plurinominal; 15 uninominal
MNR - 1 plurinominal; 1 uninominal
ASI - 1 plurinominal
APB - 2 uninominal
AAI - 1 uninominal

Beni
Podemos - 3 plurinominal; 8 uninominal
MNR - 1 plurinominal; 5 uninominal
MAS - 1 plurinominal; 2 uninominal

Pando
Podemos - 2 plurinominal; 6 uninominal
MAS - 1 plurinominal; 3 uninominal
MNR - 1 plurinominal
UN - 1 plurinominal

This would give a grand total of:
MAS - 139 delegates
Podemos - 61
MNR - 17
UN - 8
MBL - 8
CN - 5
AS - 4
MOP - 3
AYRA - 2
ASP - 2
APB - 2
MCSFA - 1
ASI - 1
AAI - 1
MIR - 1

These results give MAS the majority bloc (54.5% of seats), followed by Podemos (23.9%) and the MNR (6.7%). The next strongest seat shares go to Unidad Nacional (3.1%) & MBL (3.1%), Concertación Nacional (2.0%), Alianza Social (1.6%), the Potosí-based indigenous MOP (1.2%), and the rest are less than one percent of the total seat shares.

What does this mean?

Clearly, MAS is the big winner in the constituent assembly election. But the party didn't win by as large a margin as it had hoped — its seat share distribution is about the same than its current share in parliament (53.5%). In part, the electoral system limited the number of seats MAS (or any single party) could potentially win. The maximum ceiling for any party was a theoretical 185 seats (if no other party won 5% in any department & if the winning party won in all 70 uninominal districts) or 72.5% of the seats. Of course, at various points Evo stated that this was his intention — so one could argue that MAS didn't live up to its own expectations (which, to be fair, were ludicrously high).

Though I was surprised to see MAS increase its vote shares in Tarija & Santa Cruz. But the relative stability of the MAS vote suggests that the increase in the media luna coincides w/ a proportional decrease in Andean Bolivia.

Perhaps one could call Podemos (the party of Tuto Quiroga) the "loser" in the recent assembly election. The party won significantly fewer votes than in December (down from 28.5% to about 15% last Sunday). Still, it won a higher seat share than vote share (thanks in part to the electoral system), though this is still a decline from its current strength in parliament (35.7%). Nevertheless, Podemos remained the only party other than MAS capable of winning seats in every department. And holding nearly a quarter of the seats isn't all that bad.

The relative "winner" (in my opinion) is the MNR. Campaigning under various banners in different departments ("MNR," "A3-MNR," and "MNR-FRI"), the party slightly increased its seat share (from 5.1%) to become the third largest party, leapfrogging over Unidad Nacional (which declined from its current 5.7% share of parliament). The results show that the party still has some relevance, particularly in the media luna departments.

The minor parties that won representation include parties of various persuasions, not all of which could easily join a MAS-led bloc. If we add the seats held by parties likely to oppose MAS (Podemos, MNR, UN, APB, AAI, MIR, and ASI) they sum to 91 seats or just over a third (35.7%) of the total seats. Since a two-thirds supermajority is required for many key issues, the opposition has significant leverage against MAS. Even removing the socialist ASI (whose leader, Jerjes Justiniano, has opposed Evo on various occasions), the remaining parties still hold more than a third of total seats. And not all the remaining parties are easy MAS allies, however. Concertación Nacional is an alliance of Christian Evangelical churches & could side w/ a Podemos-led bloc on some issues.

More importantly, the smallness of each of the potential allies means that any MAS bloc will have a major collective action problem. Since each minor party knows that it's crucial to coalition cohesion, it has incentive to make demands on the major party (MAS) disproportional to their seat (or vote) strength. Tending to these demands may be more difficult than tending to the opposition. On some issues, it may be more expedient to cooperate w/ Podemos to forge a mutual agreement (since MAS & Podemos together hold 78.4% of seats) rather than bargain w/ a half-dozen minor parties.

Thus, it's unlikely that this constituent assembly will turn into a rubber stamp for Evo's government (as happened in Venezuela & Peru in recent memory). Time will tell, of course.

Posted by Miguel at 01:25 PM

Comments

Miguel:

Thanks for this analysis. It is really interesting.

I was wondering about your statement that the theoretical ceiling is 185 seats. That would require a party to win all 45 of the departmental seats. You say that there is a 5% threshold for departmental seats, but it seems to me that the convocation says that the 5% threshold is only applied to the 3rd and 4th parties; the second party (first runner-up) seems to be guaranteed one seat, which is consistent with the "uninominal" seat allocation where there is no threshold.

I suppose you could argue that the omission of the 5% threshold for the second party was simply an error, but on the other hand it may have been deliberate and in any event, that's what it says. In that case, the theoretical ceiling would be 176 seats (69%).

As you say, actually achieving the theoretical ceiling would have been almost impossible -- without violating the spirit of the convocation. Morales could have done considerably better by presenting two lists in the departments in which his support is highest: in Chuquisaca, La Paz and Oruro, MAS's victory over the next party was 3-1 or more in every district (generally, much more). So it wouldn't require a very precise division of MAS's votes to achieve 100% of the uninominal seats and 60% of the plurinominal seats in those three departments, an additional 29 seats or so. It is to Evo's credit that he didn't try a strategy like that.

Posted by: rici at July 6, 2006 02:16 PM

Is it possible for Morales and MAS to change the rules of the constituent assembly to allow majority decisions to establish constitutional changes instead of a supermajority of 2/3?

This was the approach used in Venezuela to pass legislation before the last legislative election. On the first three readings of a law a 2/3 majority was required but on the fourth reading a majority was sufficient.

Posted by: Ginger at July 6, 2006 02:22 PM

Rici:

You're right, of course, that the 5% threshold was explicitly applied to the 3rd & 4th departmental seats. But there was question as to whether it would be applied to the 2nd seat as well (though highly unlikely the question would ever be posed by real voting results).

As to the strategy of presenting "two lists" in areas w/ stronger MAS suppoert: That's exactly what MAS tried to do, to varying success. But this strategy is potentially flawed. If enough MAS supporters split their votes, it could give an opening for a concentrated opponent (most likely Podemos) to edge both lists out. Imagine if MAS had support from 60% of voters, but split into even 30% halves; Podemos could win two seats by taking 30%+1 of the vote.

From what I can tell (vote counts are still not entirely finished), it looks like many of the MAS allies came short of passing MAS opponents. On the other hand, in some places MAS won seats because MAS opponents were split. So it cuts both ways.

The reason why presenting two (or more) lists can't really work as a predictable strategy is because voters only have ONE vote choice, not two or more (as in some types of electoral systems). If voters could either 1) vote for more than one list or 2) rank order their preference among the lists, then presenting more than one list could be a workable strategy (as in STV electoral systems). But since voters cast only ONE choice from each set of lists, votes for any list that doesn't win seats are "wasted" votes; and parties that develop strategies based on voters coordinating their votes (I vote for MAS, my neighbor votes for a MAS ally, etc) is dangerous — unless votes aren't secret, of course.

Posted by: mcentellas at July 6, 2006 02:32 PM

Ginger:

Excellent question! I'm not entirely sure, since I think few people are sure what (if any) the pre-determined rules the constituent assembly will follow are. The 2/3 rule is used by parliament, and so far its looks as if most observers/participants are assuming that the rules used by parliament should hold for this assembly as well. But there's no reason why the assembly (which will meet parallel to parliament, but in a different city) can't develop its own rules.

If only majorities are required, then, yes, MAS has the required majority (unless members defect for whatever reason). But I suspect that the realities on the ground (e.g. the threat of outright secession or civil disturbance if the minority rights of some anti-MAS sectors aren't respected) will compell a 2/3 supermajority to hold in order to have a real consensus, rather than continued political friction.

Posted by: mcentellas at July 6, 2006 02:38 PM

What kind of party is AYRA then? :-)

The corius swede

Posted by: Fredrik Lindqvist at July 7, 2006 03:08 AM

AYRA is "Movimiento Ayra (Renovación)" & is a leftist-student movement founded in honor of Che Guevarra.

Posted by: mcentellas at July 7, 2006 10:21 AM