Expect a sweep, mandate debated

Agreement resounds on the likelihood of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, winning elections in most municipalities nationwide, but the level of support wavers under greater uncertainty.

Just two days ahead of the March 29 local elections, two respected polling companies have arrived at significantly divergent conclusions.

The latest poll from the privately owned Konda Research firm suggests that the AKP will win 47.9 percent of the votes nationwide for provincial assemblies and 44.6 percent in mayoral races, a 4 percent rise over the 41.7 percent share the party took in the 2004 local elections. The A&G Research Company, however, suggested that the AKP’s mayoral votes would drop to 39.1 percent. Konda’s survey, dated March 14 and 15, estimated that the AKP could muster 51.8 percent of the votes if general elections were held today. A&G Survey reached a different result in its latest poll, giving the AKP 42.5 percent, less than the 46.6 percent it obtained in July 2007 general elections.

Konda and A&G, both based in Istanbul and founded in 1987 and 1997 respectively, are among the most-quoted survey companies in Turkey and are generally viewed as unbiased. Before the last general elections, both firms successfully predicted the AKP’s success, with Konda estimating the party would get 47 percent of the vote. While both now agree that the Republican People's Party, or CHP, will increase its vote total by drawing voters who fear the AKP has a hidden Islamic agenda or appreciate CHP leader Deniz Baykal’s emphasis on the economic downturn, the heads of the two companies gave sharply different interpretations of the political and social developments that might lead to AKP's rise or start it on a downward slope.

Adil Gür, who heads A&G, is convinced that the AKP will falter. "AKP nominated the wrong candidates in many provinces, against its local organizations' will. This will surely have a negative effect on AKP votes," Gür told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. Konda president and founder Tarhan Erdem, however, wrote in an article published yesterday in daily Radikal that the AKP would increase its votes because it has succeeded in becoming a party with mass appeal.

These two experienced pollsters also disagreed on the impact the economic crisis would have on AKP votes. "Nowhere on Earth has a ruling party ever increased its votes during an economic crisis," Gür said. Erdem countered that the economic crisis would not strike the AKP hard.

"The economy is the most important factor in voter behavior, but although the masses are aware of the economic downturn, AKP votes are not affected," he said. The likely behavior of Kurds, a major voting group at stake for the AKP, was also a subject of discrepancy.

"The hard-line stance on the Kurdish question adopted by [Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan in recent weeks has alienated some Kurdish votes," Gür said, adding that government initiatives like the launch of a Kurdish TV station, TRT 6, will not have the desired effect.

"One of every two women in Diyarbakır do not know how to read," he said. Konda predicted, however, that the AKP would still be the major party getting Kurdish votes. "The fact that Kurds favor the Democratic Society Party, or DTP, where they are likely to succeed [in Diyarbakır, for example] does not contradict this statement," Erdem wrote. The discrepancies between the two polls might be due to different polling samples, Gür said. Erdem refused to comment.