Eight scenarios for the 2018 elections
There has been considerable concern about the level of engineering behind these elections.
Which is of course fair enough. Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that the outcome of this election is still technically up in the air. This is not a Stalin or Saddam style rigging project. As much as GHQ has tilted the playing field in the last few months, Pakistani voters still exercise agency. The generals have had their say, but on July 25, the people get a go. While it is reasonable to surmise that the establishment's efforts have made the entire thing foreordained, I think there's still some grey area, if only because we know (hope?) that full-blown ballot stuffing and miscounting of votes is not on the cards.
With that in mind, I've tried to think through a few educated guesses of what the world may look like. Before I lay those out, some major caveats:
1. The data is limited, both in how much there is and how good it is
2. Even if the data were great, no one -- not even my mother -- would describe me as a Nate Silver type good enough to properly exploit whatever large-n does exist
3. These are all back of the envelope guesstimates, not precise calculations
So, let's begin. A good place to start would be mapping out the 2008 and 2013 elections, the pair of which can function as our baseline. Here is a plot of the vote share and NA seat share of all parties that won at least 10 NA seats. There were nine such instances: PPP twice, PMLN twice, MQM twice, PMLQ in 2008, PTI in 2013, and JUI in 2013.
That near-45 degree line is a rough guide of how many votes a party needs to win (x-axis) to win a certain number of seats (y-axis). In other words, on average, a 20% vote share will result in roughly 60 NA seats, 25% about 75 seats, and 30% about 90 seats.
One thing that is immediately clear from this graph is that the PMLN is very good at converting votes into seats. Whether this is noise, or due to something real -- such as electoral strategy, delimiting/gerrymandering playing in its favor, vote splits among like-minded parties, or whatever -- I have no idea. But it does appear instructive that both of PMLN's performances are above the line and both of its primary opponents in the breadbasket of Punjab, PMLQ in 2008 and PTI in 2013, are well below.
We will keep this "PMLN punching above its vote share weight" point in mind for the scenarios below. The other three things to keep in mind before we begin
2. The roughly 30 electables from South Punjab that have been forced from the PMLN's ranks thanks to the aforementioned rigging. These 30 may prove to be super important in a week's time.
3. The polls. According to wikipedia, there have been 6 national polls since May 2018. This is what they look like.
Basically PPP is between 15% and 20%. PTI is between 25% and 30%. And taking out the two early polls that appear to be kinda outlier-ish, PMLN is, similar to PTI, between 25% and 30%. The averages of the last four polls has PMLN and PTI in a dead heat: 28% each. So going by the polls, it's going to be really close.
4. I'm going to divvy up 200 seats between the three major parties. In the last two elections, the three biggest parties (PPP, PMLN, and PMLQ in 2008; PPP, PMLN, and PTI in 2013) have won 198 and 190 seats between them respectively. 200 seems a nice, juicy round number to assume the three top parties will share.
Ok, let's begin. These are arranged from most friendly to PTI to least friendly to PTI.
Situation 1: PTI kills it
Instead of the 28% it's polling at, let's say PTI wins, I dunno, 32% of the vote. 32% can mean different things to different parties. PMLN converted 32% into 130 seats in 2013 while PPP converted 31% to 91 seats in 2008. That's a pretty wide range, so let's split the difference, meet in the middle, and give PTI 110 seats. Note that 110 seats/32% will be well above the blue line above, but we'll give this bump to the PTI for the 30-electables reason if nothing else.
In this scenario, PTI's rivals do as badly as realistically possible. We will say PPP doesn't even match its 2013 performance (possible but I doubt it), while PMLN does worse than 2008 (highly unlikely given it's a popular incumbent party).
PTI: 110 seats
PMLN: 60
PPP: 30
Likelihood: 5%. I don't see this happening, though I suppose it's possible. Everything would have to break right for PTI and everything would have to go wrong for the other two.
Situation 2: PTI wins comfortably
Let's be a little less generous to PTI here. We'll say it wins a comfortable majority, and its rivals match their worst showings from the last decade (2008 for PMLN, 2013 for PPP). This is presumably the situation GHQ wants most: have their blue-eyed boys win, but not so outlandishly as to make the whole thing a joke. Something like
PTI: 100 seats
PMLN: 65
PPP: 35
is well within the realms of plausibility and would be consistent with polling. Incidentally, this is also roughly what a widely-shared-on-Twitter estimate looked like
I think this is probably the single-most likely outcome of the election but by no means a sure thing. I'm going to give it a likelihood of 25% of occurring.
Situation 3: PTI wins, PPP overperforms, PMLN underperforms
Two things happen here. One, the GHQ/PTI plan pays off as expected and PTI forms the next government. Two, on the back of a very solid campaign by Bilawal, and being able to sneak up on people while everyone paid attention to the elephant fight between PMLN and PTI, the PPP manages to make a comeback of sorts. Not enough to make a real difference, but enough that having both PMLN and PPP in the opposition becomes untenable, politically if not mathematically. Put differently, in this situation, Imran Khan is forced to bring Zardari and co along in his government, a truly delicious prospect.
PTI: 95 seats
PMLN: 60
PPP: 45
Likelihood: 15%. Better odds than the "PTI absolutely romps to victory" but not super likely. I can see PTI winning 95 seats, yes, but I can't see the gap between PMLN and PPP being this narrow.
Situation 4: PTI wins, PMLN overperforms, PPP underperforms
A weird world. Let's say
PTI: 90 seats
PMLN: 80
PPP: 30
I just don't see something like this happening. It would have to be a real statistical Goldilocks event: PMLN does well enough to win a bunch of seats, but somehow not well enough to stop its main rival from winning the whole thing. I suppose it's technically possible but I don't see it.
Likelihood: 5%. Longshot odds.
Situation 5: PTI wins in name only
The most volatile situation. GHQ's plans come off, but just barely, and no one considers PTI's win legitimate. Pakistan does not lend itself to minority governments (and it would not happen) but the numbers would be there for such an eventuality.
PTI: 85 seats
PMLN: 75
PPP: 40
Much more likely, this outcome would see Pakistan descend into some pretty serious political instability. I really would rather not imagine the aftermath of this.
Likelihood: 15%. Would be consistent with polling and given the "if something weird and unfortunate can happen to Pakistan, it will" rule, I am putting my money on this one.
Now let's move on to situations where PMLN wins.
Situation 6: PMLN wins, but PTI closer to first than third
PMLN's base turns out and GHQ ends up with egg on its face. PTI more than doubles its seats from 2013 and it still feels like a big disappointment. PPP holds steady. Something like
PMLN: 90 seats
PTI: 70
PPP: 40
Imran Khan is gonna be pissed if this happens. A "so close yet so far" scenario for the ages. Zardari gets his pound of flesh and we see a Charter of Democracy coalition.
Likelihood: 15%. The three PMLN-win scenarios are all similarly likely in my opinion, but this one is the most likely.
Situation 7: PMLN wins but PPP's comeback is the big story
We are now inching closer to Imran Khan's ultimate nightmare. The top three parties are pretty tightly bunched up. Here, not only does he not win, but it is also unclear whether PTI has a serious electoral future, seeing as how it barely finishes ahead of the much-derided PPP with all that help from the angels.
PMLN: 85 seats
PTI: 65 seats
PPP: 50 seats
The story of this election would be Bilawal and how he has rebuilt the party, how he is a fresh face blah blah. A 20% vote share probably gets them there but only in one of the six polls above do they reach that number. It's possible, and I want to see a rebuilt, strong PPP, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Likelihood: 10%.
Situation 8: PMLN laughs its way to the bank
This is the "come at the King, you best not miss" scenario. The PMLN base looks GHQ in the eye and makes them blink. All those dharnas; all those TuQs and tankers; all that mainstreaming, rigging, intimidating, and bribing; all that furious Twittering by all those furious Insafians comes to nothing. PMLN takes the loss of 30 electables and says "fine, but that's all we're losing."
PMLN: 100 seats
PTI: 65
PPP: 35
This is easily the most hilarious of all the scenarios listed here. I am prepared to hear anything about Imran Khan in the aftermath of this eventuality. Shaves his head and moves to Tibet? Sure. Takes an Elon Musk rocket to space? I buy it. Joins ISIS? Frightfully likely under the best of circumstances, let alone at this point.
Likelihood: 10%. The bad guy's bad plans blowing up in his face only happens in bad movies. This would be amazing and comedy gold but remains a relative longshot.
Cumulative likelihood PTI wins: 65%. Cumulative likelihood of PMLN win: 35%.
Which is of course fair enough. Nevertheless, it bears mentioning that the outcome of this election is still technically up in the air. This is not a Stalin or Saddam style rigging project. As much as GHQ has tilted the playing field in the last few months, Pakistani voters still exercise agency. The generals have had their say, but on July 25, the people get a go. While it is reasonable to surmise that the establishment's efforts have made the entire thing foreordained, I think there's still some grey area, if only because we know (hope?) that full-blown ballot stuffing and miscounting of votes is not on the cards.
With that in mind, I've tried to think through a few educated guesses of what the world may look like. Before I lay those out, some major caveats:
1. The data is limited, both in how much there is and how good it is
2. Even if the data were great, no one -- not even my mother -- would describe me as a Nate Silver type good enough to properly exploit whatever large-n does exist
3. These are all back of the envelope guesstimates, not precise calculations
So, let's begin. A good place to start would be mapping out the 2008 and 2013 elections, the pair of which can function as our baseline. Here is a plot of the vote share and NA seat share of all parties that won at least 10 NA seats. There were nine such instances: PPP twice, PMLN twice, MQM twice, PMLQ in 2008, PTI in 2013, and JUI in 2013.
That near-45 degree line is a rough guide of how many votes a party needs to win (x-axis) to win a certain number of seats (y-axis). In other words, on average, a 20% vote share will result in roughly 60 NA seats, 25% about 75 seats, and 30% about 90 seats.
One thing that is immediately clear from this graph is that the PMLN is very good at converting votes into seats. Whether this is noise, or due to something real -- such as electoral strategy, delimiting/gerrymandering playing in its favor, vote splits among like-minded parties, or whatever -- I have no idea. But it does appear instructive that both of PMLN's performances are above the line and both of its primary opponents in the breadbasket of Punjab, PMLQ in 2008 and PTI in 2013, are well below.
We will keep this "PMLN punching above its vote share weight" point in mind for the scenarios below. The other three things to keep in mind before we begin
2. The roughly 30 electables from South Punjab that have been forced from the PMLN's ranks thanks to the aforementioned rigging. These 30 may prove to be super important in a week's time.
3. The polls. According to wikipedia, there have been 6 national polls since May 2018. This is what they look like.
Basically PPP is between 15% and 20%. PTI is between 25% and 30%. And taking out the two early polls that appear to be kinda outlier-ish, PMLN is, similar to PTI, between 25% and 30%. The averages of the last four polls has PMLN and PTI in a dead heat: 28% each. So going by the polls, it's going to be really close.
4. I'm going to divvy up 200 seats between the three major parties. In the last two elections, the three biggest parties (PPP, PMLN, and PMLQ in 2008; PPP, PMLN, and PTI in 2013) have won 198 and 190 seats between them respectively. 200 seems a nice, juicy round number to assume the three top parties will share.
Ok, let's begin. These are arranged from most friendly to PTI to least friendly to PTI.
Situation 1: PTI kills it
Instead of the 28% it's polling at, let's say PTI wins, I dunno, 32% of the vote. 32% can mean different things to different parties. PMLN converted 32% into 130 seats in 2013 while PPP converted 31% to 91 seats in 2008. That's a pretty wide range, so let's split the difference, meet in the middle, and give PTI 110 seats. Note that 110 seats/32% will be well above the blue line above, but we'll give this bump to the PTI for the 30-electables reason if nothing else.
In this scenario, PTI's rivals do as badly as realistically possible. We will say PPP doesn't even match its 2013 performance (possible but I doubt it), while PMLN does worse than 2008 (highly unlikely given it's a popular incumbent party).
PTI: 110 seats
PMLN: 60
PPP: 30
Likelihood: 5%. I don't see this happening, though I suppose it's possible. Everything would have to break right for PTI and everything would have to go wrong for the other two.
Situation 2: PTI wins comfortably
Let's be a little less generous to PTI here. We'll say it wins a comfortable majority, and its rivals match their worst showings from the last decade (2008 for PMLN, 2013 for PPP). This is presumably the situation GHQ wants most: have their blue-eyed boys win, but not so outlandishly as to make the whole thing a joke. Something like
PTI: 100 seats
PMLN: 65
PPP: 35
is well within the realms of plausibility and would be consistent with polling. Incidentally, this is also roughly what a widely-shared-on-Twitter estimate looked like
I think this is probably the single-most likely outcome of the election but by no means a sure thing. I'm going to give it a likelihood of 25% of occurring.
Situation 3: PTI wins, PPP overperforms, PMLN underperforms
Two things happen here. One, the GHQ/PTI plan pays off as expected and PTI forms the next government. Two, on the back of a very solid campaign by Bilawal, and being able to sneak up on people while everyone paid attention to the elephant fight between PMLN and PTI, the PPP manages to make a comeback of sorts. Not enough to make a real difference, but enough that having both PMLN and PPP in the opposition becomes untenable, politically if not mathematically. Put differently, in this situation, Imran Khan is forced to bring Zardari and co along in his government, a truly delicious prospect.
PTI: 95 seats
PMLN: 60
PPP: 45
Likelihood: 15%. Better odds than the "PTI absolutely romps to victory" but not super likely. I can see PTI winning 95 seats, yes, but I can't see the gap between PMLN and PPP being this narrow.
Situation 4: PTI wins, PMLN overperforms, PPP underperforms
A weird world. Let's say
PTI: 90 seats
PMLN: 80
PPP: 30
I just don't see something like this happening. It would have to be a real statistical Goldilocks event: PMLN does well enough to win a bunch of seats, but somehow not well enough to stop its main rival from winning the whole thing. I suppose it's technically possible but I don't see it.
Likelihood: 5%. Longshot odds.
Situation 5: PTI wins in name only
The most volatile situation. GHQ's plans come off, but just barely, and no one considers PTI's win legitimate. Pakistan does not lend itself to minority governments (and it would not happen) but the numbers would be there for such an eventuality.
PTI: 85 seats
PMLN: 75
PPP: 40
Much more likely, this outcome would see Pakistan descend into some pretty serious political instability. I really would rather not imagine the aftermath of this.
Likelihood: 15%. Would be consistent with polling and given the "if something weird and unfortunate can happen to Pakistan, it will" rule, I am putting my money on this one.
Now let's move on to situations where PMLN wins.
Situation 6: PMLN wins, but PTI closer to first than third
PMLN's base turns out and GHQ ends up with egg on its face. PTI more than doubles its seats from 2013 and it still feels like a big disappointment. PPP holds steady. Something like
PMLN: 90 seats
PTI: 70
PPP: 40
Imran Khan is gonna be pissed if this happens. A "so close yet so far" scenario for the ages. Zardari gets his pound of flesh and we see a Charter of Democracy coalition.
Likelihood: 15%. The three PMLN-win scenarios are all similarly likely in my opinion, but this one is the most likely.
Situation 7: PMLN wins but PPP's comeback is the big story
We are now inching closer to Imran Khan's ultimate nightmare. The top three parties are pretty tightly bunched up. Here, not only does he not win, but it is also unclear whether PTI has a serious electoral future, seeing as how it barely finishes ahead of the much-derided PPP with all that help from the angels.
PMLN: 85 seats
PTI: 65 seats
PPP: 50 seats
The story of this election would be Bilawal and how he has rebuilt the party, how he is a fresh face blah blah. A 20% vote share probably gets them there but only in one of the six polls above do they reach that number. It's possible, and I want to see a rebuilt, strong PPP, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Likelihood: 10%.
Situation 8: PMLN laughs its way to the bank
This is the "come at the King, you best not miss" scenario. The PMLN base looks GHQ in the eye and makes them blink. All those dharnas; all those TuQs and tankers; all that mainstreaming, rigging, intimidating, and bribing; all that furious Twittering by all those furious Insafians comes to nothing. PMLN takes the loss of 30 electables and says "fine, but that's all we're losing."
PMLN: 100 seats
PTI: 65
PPP: 35
This is easily the most hilarious of all the scenarios listed here. I am prepared to hear anything about Imran Khan in the aftermath of this eventuality. Shaves his head and moves to Tibet? Sure. Takes an Elon Musk rocket to space? I buy it. Joins ISIS? Frightfully likely under the best of circumstances, let alone at this point.
Likelihood: 10%. The bad guy's bad plans blowing up in his face only happens in bad movies. This would be amazing and comedy gold but remains a relative longshot.
Cumulative likelihood PTI wins: 65%. Cumulative likelihood of PMLN win: 35%.
If Nawaz or Maryam(or even Safdar) had been outside prison, the situation would have been different. Shahbaz's appeasement seems to lose interest among supporters and killed the energy.
ReplyDeleteHowever you should have looked at the 2013 results in a fine grained manner.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1027198
https://www.dawn.com/news/1027127
If you look at Punjab in 2018: with 49%, PMLN won 118 seats. With 19%, PTI won 8.
In 2013, PMLN won 29% vote and nearly 70 seats even under BB's sympathy wave.
PMLN loses votes to PTI in Punjab proper and 30 electables in South Punjab.
Take out the 30 electables PMLN gets down to 88. Even with PTI's vote share bump, this wouldn't cause much damage to PMLN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Pakistani_general_election,_2018#Punjab
The polls show that in Punjab PTI has at best 33% vote share. This after PMLQs vote gets ameliorated and along with independents/electables it absorbed.
As we know in a single seat the second largest party gets 49% but still loses to the guy with 50% essentially wasting this vote share. Essentially loser's vote share gets wasted most by losing closely and winner's vote share gets wasted by winning with huge margins.
http://gallup.com.pk/elections-2013-of-the-127-seats-won-by-pml-n-61-seats-were-won-with-over-15-margin-comparable-figures-for-pti-31-ppp-56-mqm-95-and-independent-candidates-4/
Given that big hitters of PMLN are arrested, disqualified or on the run, and the jeepers left with a few seats, PTI's added vote share would at best improve the above graph and make PMLN lose 10 seats. 4 disqualifications - Maryam, Safdar and ephedrine seats included and Chaudhary Nisar's few antiques and some slice-and-dice by the fundoos may pull away another 10. That still leaves 68 worst case for PMLN.
My guess is that they will make it past 80 comfortably. PMLN under 70 is simply impossible sans actual rigging during polling. There are several indicators these days. PTI's bombed Jhelum rally and the first of its sort demonstration in front of GHQ seem to indicate the mood.
Besides, contrary to IK's stupid assumption, electioneering is not just a single person's skillset which can be acquired by stacking electables. It needs a well-oiled organization which cannot setup in a month for an election fest.
The only constituency wise I found shows an even better picture, showing an increase in voting percentage for PMLN. It also says that the gain of PTI has entirely come at the expense of PPP and PMLQ. I wont be surprised if they get >85 seats(118 - south - disqualifications + ephedrine repoll)
https://www.geo.tv/latest/201758-ipor-constituency-survey-finds-pml-n-leading-in-punjab-pti-gaining-ground-with-50-increase-since-2013
Best summary yet I am praying for "pmln wins big" but think one or two of the "pmln still with 75 seats" scenarios looks more likely . Let's see if they go for full rigging and get scenario 1..
ReplyDeleteThere should be a period after "best summary yet"
DeleteYour Situation2 came true. Just like establishment wanted. :D
ReplyDelete