Why Turkish Pollsters Didn’t Foresee Erdogan’s Win

Turkey’s pollsters, including me, got it wrong. In the election held on the centennial of the Turkish Republic, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got 49.5 percent in the first-round vote on May 14 despite polls suggesting he would get around 46 percent. Two weeks later, he took 52 percent of the popular vote in the second round of the presidential election, and his governing People’s Alliance secured 323 of the 600 seats in the parliament, allowing a handsome margin over the simple-majority threshold of 301. Come 2028, Erdogan will have been essentially leading the country for 25 uninterrupted years as either president or prime minister—an unprecedented reign.

Read more of FP’s coverage of Turkey’s pivotal elections.

The elections were free but far from fair. In a deeply polarized society, Erdogan has control over vast amounts of state resources as well as media that clearly provided an edge. Two days before the first round of the presidential election, Erdogan had a TV appearance that was broadcast simultaneously by 18 different TV stations, including the state broadcasting company, TRT. In contrast, his rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, was largely excluded from TRT—or covered unfairly—and did most of his communication through social media—most notably using iconic videos he recorded in his kitchen.

Sixteen ministers of his cabinet were nominated for the parliament, and they ran their campaigns with the full force of their ministries. However, the uneven playing field alone is not enough to explain the loss of the six-party opposition in the face of almost 50 percent inflation and an increasingly one-man rule that is failing to deliver in governance like it used to. Noteworthy is the fact that not only did Erdogan not lose, but his support seems to have remained solid over the past decade: In the presidential elections of 2014, 2018, and 2023, he got 51.8, 52.6, and 52.2 percent of the popular vote, respectively

Clearly, yet not surprisingly, the Erdogan supporters had very little interest in what the opposition had to say. It was the conviction of the opposition and experts at large that the failing economy would render Erdogan supporters more amenable to opposition policies. Two findings seem to explain best why that was not the case.

First is the geographical divide that appeared in political inclinations after the election. In the rural parts of the country that represent roughly 20 percent of the population, Erdogan managed to get 65 percent of the popular vote against Kilicdaroglu’s 35 percent. In the remaining 80 percent that represents the urban parts, Kilicdaroglu surpassed Erdogan by getting 51 percent of the popular vote. In other words, in places where life is relatively simple and the increasing cost of living is not felt as ferociously, Erdogan performed much better.

Second is the unprecedented fiscal expansion that the government opted for in the lead-up to the election. The minimum wage was raised to $455 per month in December 2022, the highest real value since 2019. In addition, a bill eliminating age limits on retirement and offering early retirement to millions of citizens was ratified in the parliament.

Those who retired could be rehired by their current employers to enjoy a second salary, thereby significantly increasing monthly household income. Finally, the value of the U.S. dollar was kept below 20 lira at the expense of central bank reserves. Turkish people use the price of the dollar as a yardstick to measure the health of the economy, like Americans do with gas prices and Germans with inflation. As a result, economic sentiment turned positive. Perceived improvement was an illusion as it was caused by reckless fiscal expansion and not by resolving the root causes of macroeconomic vulnerabilities. The most notable illusion was a heavy discount on natural gas bills for households for the month of the election. Now that the party is over, the new government will have to pick up the bill. In our own polling at Turkiye Raporu, the share of respondents with a positive outlook of the economy surpassed the negative in March 2023. The improvement in consumer sentiment was well reflected in the polls prior to the election as support for the AKP.

The fiscal expansion indeed helped mitigate the discontent of Erdogan supporters. However, it was the polarizing identity politics that carried him over the 50 percent threshold into a third-term victory. Erdogan’s identity pitch had two main pillars. First was the rhetoric that suggested association of the opposition with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a listed terrorist organization. The pro-Kurdish HDP (rebranded as Green Left) not nominating a presidential candidate in support of Kilicdaroglu was presented as evidence. To this end, an altered video including PKK leaders in an opposition propaganda clip was shown at Erdogan’s Istanbul rally on May 7, a week before the first-round election. Even Erdogan accepted on national television that the video was altered. This was a first as far as Turkish political competition goes. It was done in the last week before the first round, and the opposition had no time to reverse the impact.

Second was the anti-LGBT, anti-Western, pro-conservative family values propaganda. Then-Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu went as far as to suggest that if the opposition won, the LGBT, which he portrayed as an organization, would allow for marriages between humans and animals. The opposition dismissed these as nonsense, although it should not have. The opposition should have recognized the misinformation trend earlier and focused on prebunking these claims.

These two pillars were supported by the achievements of the Turkish military-industrial complex that managed to produce the drones, aircraft carriers, and national tanks along with the national car project Togg. It did not help that the opposition appeared to be belittling these achievements during the campaign. These achievements were the promise of the new “Turkish century”—the overarching theme of Erdogan’s campaign.

The opposition is, of course, not without fault. The disorganized appearance of its leaders and a campaign that completely missed out on the rising nationalistic sentiment caused the disgruntled Erdogan supporters to stay on the other side of the aisle. The country was in bad shape, but they were told repeatedly that only Erdogan could put it back together. So much so that even in the earthquake zone, ravaged by the recent disasters, Erdogan dominated, although he proposed new houses to be built and sold, whereas Kilicdaroglu promised them to be built for free. The opposition did not manage to overcome the distrust created by the Erdogan campaign.

Having won the presidency and the majority in the parliament, Erdogan’s new government will face a number of challenges caused by poor economic management and the irresponsible fiscal pre-election expansion. The appointment of Mehmet Simsek, a former finance minister, to lead the economy potentially signals a change to rational economic policies. However, it remains to be seen how much leeway Erdogan will provide Simsek in the lead-up to the municipal elections. A tightening may not be in the books. Indeed, investors at home and abroad are weary. After all, they had seen signs of change with the appointment of Lutfi Elvan as head of the treasury and Naci Agbal as head of the central bank in hopes for normalization, only to see the two removed from duty abruptly back in 2021.

The opposition, on the other hand, now must reinvent itself and find ways to overcome the big split that for the past decade has kept it below the 50 percent threshold. The 48 percent it won is no small feat, but in an executive presidential system, it is simply not enough.