Pakistan--more elections comparisons

According to a table of seat results at Wikipedia,* the "victory" for the PPP in 2008 was a bit worse a showing--in seats--than it had in 1988 and 1993, the two elections that resulted in Benazir Bhutto's premierships. Out of 207 total seats in these elections, her party won 93 in 1988 and 89 in 1993. That's 45% and 43% of seats, respectively, compared to 32% this time.

Sharif's party won 137 in 1997,** the election that led to his premiership, which was interrupted by Musharraf's coup in 1999.


* Never my favorite source, but will have to do for now.

** Compared to 68 of 272 now.

Pakistan 2002 comparison

One more note on Pakistan. If the PML(Q) of the 2008 elections can be considered more or less the same as the PML(Q) that ran in the 2002 elections under military rule, it actually did about as well--in votes--in these elections as it did under less competitive conditions then: 25.7% in 2002, 24.0% in 2008.

In 2002, given different district-level competitive dynamics, this quarter of the vote translated into a quarter of the seats, compared to the 14% it got in 2008.

With the "democratic" parties fully participating again, voter participation was higher in 2008, but not dramatically so: about 31 million, compared to 29.6 in 2002.

So, with a slightly higher turnout Musharraf's party experienced almost perfect stasis in the vote share. It did, however, suffer a substantial loss of seats.

Pakistan election results

From Pakistan News Room, by way of Adam Carr, the preliminary results from the recent Pakistani parliamentary election are rather typical of how FPTP works in a politically fragmented context.

The big "victory" by the PPP (Bhutto's party) wasn't much of a victory. It was the largest party in votes, but with under one third. It won more than 8 percentage points more than its closest challenger, the PML(Q), which is Musharraf's party (which supposedly suffered a big "defeat"; perhaps it did, but being second in votes in a fragmented field is not what I was expecting, based on the media spin).

The PPP was slightly under-represented (32% of the seats on 32.7% of the votes), which is not what one normally expects of parties that earn "big victories" under FPTP. The second largest party by votes (i.e, the PML(Q)) was indeed a big loser in seats (14.3% on 24% of the votes).

The third largest party in votes was the other party noted in the media to have done so "well." In seats, that is true. It was somewhat over-represented: 25% of the seats on 20.6% of the votes.

The main Islamist party, MMA, indeed did quite badly: 4 seats (1.47%) on 1.3% of the vote. Its main and more successful rival in the Northwest was the Awami National Party (3.7% of seats on 1.9% of votes, showing the advantage of regional concentration under FPTP).

The PPP was the only party to win seats in all states, according to Manan Ahmed, and of course, its being the more national party in such a fragmented system likely explains why it did not get the over-representation normally expected by the largest party under FPTP (votes wasted by running in districts it lost outside its strongholds). Still, for "the only national party in the country," and supposedly benefiting from "the after-shocks of Benazir Bhutto's assassination" (Ahmed's words), less than a third of the votes/seats is pretty bad. As Ahmed notes, the result is also a "reflection of how restrictive the ethnic or regional based agendas the rest of the parties" are.

Back to the election results. About 10% of the seats were won by independents, and the fourth largest party by seats, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, had 19 seats (about 7%, on 7.6% of the votes). Four parties not mentioned thus far had 1 to 4 seats each, and another 10 seats are shown by Carr as "Undeclared or postponed." There will also be another 60 seats (i.e., in addition to the 272 FPTP seats) "allocated to women members of the various parties, in proportion to the votes received."

Other than the reversal of the second and third-place parties and the substantial over-representation of Awami, the result is fairly proportional to votes cast, which is not quite as odd as it sounds for FPTP, given the regional fragmentation. I have not seen district-level results, but one can expect that many seats were either dominated by one party or, in the case of contested seats, many likely were won with less than 50%. Such bimodal distributions of district-level outcomes are also rather common under regionally fragmented FPTP. If anyone has seen the detailed results and can confirm or correct that presumption for this election, please do so in the comments.

Pakistan's election

Various news headlines today are trumpeting the "defeat' of Musharraf's party in Pakistan. Let's be clear here: Musharraf's power has never rested on the ballot box and never will. Despite his claims leading up to the election, there was never any serious chance his party would "win." Nor is his position in serious jeopardy. He was just reelected to the presidency--which has a fixed term and is not subject to parliamentary confidence--by the parliament elected under even less free conditions in 2002.

Reports also speak of the parties of Bhutto (PPP) and Sharif (the PM Musharraf overthrew in 1999) doing well. But what does that mean? Will the old rival parties work together? They might, but let's wait and see if they do, and what that would mean. Almost certainly it won't mean the 2/3 votes in parliament for impeachment.

No, these elections are not about Musharraf and whether he stays or goes. He stays. They are about creating a weak, fragmented parliament in which Musharaff's party will be able to play the divisions among the "democratic" parties against each other.

I have also heard that the Islamists might not have done well. But I'd expect the final results to show they have done just well enough to remind the US government of what a scary place Pakistan is and why the general-turned-president is so indispensable.

Yeah, this is a cynical view of the elections. I certainly am not expert in Pakistani politics, but I doubt my cynicism is misplaced.