Was Immobilization of CHP Strongholds a Determinant Factor in 2014 Presidential Elections?

  At the 2014 Turkish Presidential Elections, The AKP’s candidate Prime Minister Erdogan (%51) decisively beat the CHP-MHP’s joint presidential candidate Ihsanoglu (%39). Following the results, many political columnists blamed CHP for failing to mobilize its supporters to go to ballot boxes.

  I wanted to statistically test these claims. First, I identified the strongholds of AKP and CHP through finding out the top ten cities that the respective parties received the highest support in 2014 local elections (general assembly results).

AKP’s cities were:

Rize

Konya

Malatya

Bingol

Kayseri

Bayburt

Cankiri

Duzce

Sakarya

Gumushane

CHP’s cities were:

Izmir

Mugla

Aydin

Canakkale

Tekirdag

Edirne

Kirklareli

Eskisehir

Istanbul

Hatay

Then, I compared the total participation rate of the electorate in these cities from 2014 local elections to 2014 presidential elections. 

AKP’s strongholds:

Cities	Total Participation in Presidential Elections	Total Participation in Local Elections	Difference (Local-Presidential)
Rize	0.77	0.84	0.08
Konya	0.81	0.90	0.09
Malatya	0.78	0.94	0.16
Bingol	0.75	0.84	0.09
Kayseri	0.82	0.91	0.09
Bayburt	0.79	0.83	0.04
Cankiri	0.78	0.92	0.14
Duzce	0.82	0.89	0.08
Sakarya	0.81	0.91	0.10
Gumushane	0.72	0.89	0.17

CHP’s strongholds:

Cities	Total Participation in Presidential Elections	Total Participation in Local Elections	Difference (Local-Presidential)
Izmir	0.76	0.9076	0.14
Mugla	0.78	0.9092	0.13
Aydin	0.78	0.9091	0.12
Canakkale	0.84	0.8918	0.05
Tekirdag	0.80	0.9024	0.11
Edirne	0.81	0.892	0.08
Kirklareli	0.82	0.9007	0.08
Eskisehir	0.80	0.9048	0.11
Istanbul	0.66	0.9066	0.25
Hatay	0.81	0.8922	0.08

I applied a Two Sample T test to figure out if there is any statistical difference between the participation difference of AKP’s strongholds and participation difference of CHP’s strongholds.

Two-sample T for DIFFAKP vs DIFFCHP

          N    Mean   StDev  SE Mean

DIFFAKP  10  0.1044  0.0408    0.013

DIFFCHP  10  0.1153  0.0542    0.017

Difference = mu (DIFFAKP) - mu (DIFFCHP)

Estimate for difference:  -0.0109

95% CI for difference:  (-0.0560, 0.0341)

T-Test of difference = 0 (vs not =): T-Value = -0.51  P-Value = 0.617  DF = 18

Both use Pooled StDev = 0.0480

At 95% confidence level, there is no significant difference (p=.617) between the groups. Therefore, we can’t statistically claim that the difference of participation rate between local elections and presidential elections in CHP’s strongholds was statistically different than the difference of participation rate in AKP’s strongholds. 

Sources:

2014 Local Election Results - www.hurriyet.com.tr

2014 Presidential Unofficial Results – www.cumhuriyet.com.tr

Salih Yasun 

yasunsalih@gmail.com