Still counting votes

07.04.2006

Technorati tags:

As of this morning's vote count, MAS looks to've won the Bolivian constituent assembly election, but w/ only 45.71% of the vote (based on 47.83% of tables counted). If those results hold — and they might not — it's a substantial 10-point drop from the MAS vote in December. But it'd be in line w/ the MAS vote for uninominal (single-seat district) parliamentary votes in December — which again suggests that Evo's victory in December 2005 was an Evo victory, more than a MAS victory.

Looking at other party's votes is something of a problem, however. Why? Because this election saw nine different sets of party lists (rather than one national set), leaving many opposition parties running as different parties.

For example, while Podemos won only 17.65% of the national vote (also a 10-point drop from December), the members of that electoral front also ran independently in different departments. To the Podemos total, we should add the totals for ADN & MIR. Most importantly, the projected share of seats that Podemos+ADN+MIR won in this election is roughly similar to the share won in December.

The surprise story, is the number of seats won by the MNR. The party ran using different names across the country (e.g. an MNR-FRI alliance ran in Tarija, an A3-MNR alliance in Santa Cruz). Their total number of projected seats is 17 (about 7% of total seats) — giving the MNR the third largest bloc after MAS & Podemos.

Still, the election was a solid MAS victory, though MAS did not win the two-thirds majority required to control the assembly. And it came nowhere near the 70% projected by Evo himself. But La Razón is predicting a potential alliance that would provide MAS w/ two-thirds supermajority. The potential alliance would include: MAS, Unidad Nacional, Concertación Nacional, AS, MBL, MOP, ASP, and MCSFA. I question whether Unidad Nacional would join such an alliance — if it doesn't, the alliance can't have the required supermajority — but one can never be sure. Such an alliance would only shut out Podemos, the MNR, MIR, APB, and AAI. No other electoral list is expected to win seats.

Finally, there's some confusion as to whether the autonomy referendum — which passed in four of nine departments — is vinculante (that is, binding) or not. If so, then the assembly is expected to a priori accept those regions as autonomous. If not, the assembly can take potential regional autonomy "under advisement" w/ the option to accept or reject it. Since the "opposition" (that is, non-MAS bloc) is composed almost entirely of parties that did well in the pro-autonomy departments (and vice versa), this could be a very, very touchy issue.

Posted by Miguel at 12:40 PM