Caracas Chronicles

My final election preview post boils down to this set of Powerpoint slides, (versión en español aquí) based on the 2D-2007 All Over Again Scenario.

The long-and-the short of it, the opposition COULD still win in a 50-50% election, but only if we're ruthless about targetting our efforts, and get lucky, too...

Note: You can download the PowerPoint slides this post is based on in either language:

1. Slides en Español here
2. Slides in English here

Circulate them!

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So I spent the weekend putzing around with election forecast maps, something of a guilty-pleasure for someone who's weary of this year's parliamentary elections being mistaken for a normal, democratic vote. No matter how you slice the data,  though, the conclusion is always the same: this year, we're going to be fighting not just the goverment, but also an outrageously gerrymandered map that makes it easy to imagine a number of scenarios where we win most of the votes but they win most of the seats.

As we saw yesterday, 110 out of the National Assembly's 165 members get elected uninominally, through 89 constituencies (known as "circuitos"). Most of these circuits are single-member constituencies, but some elect two or even three representatives. (Usually, in a multiple-seat circuit, the single largest party takes all the seats at stake.)

To try to model September's election, I worked from the 2007 Constitutional Reform Referendum results. I chose 2007 for a number of reasons: for one, it shows how a "50-50 electorate" is likely to spread itself over the map CNE has just created, since, remember, in 2007 the opposition won with just a smidgeon more than half the vote. Also, because it was a straight up yes-or-no question, you avoid the complications of having to apportion independents and/or dissident chavistas to either of the two polarized groups, as you would if you work from the 2008 regional election results. Last (but certainly not least), I had excellent, detailed data handy for 2007, so it seemed only natural!

(At the end of this post, I also show you a reader's estimate's of how the map would look if 2010 tracks the 2008 regional elections rather than the 2007 referendum.)

Once I'd gathered all that data, I put it into qGIS (my trusty, open-source Geographic Information System software) and, at-da! - all kinds of pretty election forecast maps started pouring out. Check them out:

Whether any of it ultimately matters is a matter for debate, but given that the opposition is going to participate in September's elections to the National Assembly, it seems we should maybe have some idea of what we're getting into. So here's the nitty gritty:

The electoral system for the Asamblea Nacional is dual: some posts are elected circuit-by-circuit, others through state-wide party lists. In September, 110 deputies will be elected through the circuits (what "districts" or "constituencies" are called in Venezuela) while 52 deputies will be elected via those state-level lists. (A final three are elected by indigenous communities.)

The dynamics for the lists and the circuits are pretty different, so it makes sense to analyze each in turn. In this post, I'll address the lists. Later on I'll get to the more complicated - and far less predictable - circuits.

The Lists. Each of the twenty least populous states will elect two assembly-members  via statewide lists - a total of 40 seats. The three most populous states, plus the Distrito Capital, will elect three via list - a total of 12 seats. These list seats will be apportioned through the d'Hondt method. Somewhat counterintuitively, the opposition could well "win" most of the list-seats, even if it doesn't win a majority of the nationwide popular vote.

Here's why:

We've been getting lots of questions on Hugo Chávez's latest moves. Faced with a veritable plethora of crises, the government is reacting counter-intuitively by flaring up the rhetoric, threatening with all-out war, promising never to leave power, and gleefully predicting many, many battles. It doesn't take a pollster to understand this is clearly not what Venezuelan voters want to hear. 

All-out crazy? Or high-brained tactical maneuver conjured up in Miraflores and Havana?

Any sane political analyst would predict the government is piling up the errors and making a bad situation even worse. Conventional thinking would predict the opposition would be poised for huge gains.

Sterling, Virginia, USA. 6:08 AM.

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I'm guessing the other side says, "My public employee dad got bussed out to a government rally and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt..."

[Hat tip: Maye.]

Cuba's Minister of Information Technology  has arrived in Venezuela after being asked to come to Caracas and help efforts in the electricity crisis. But Ramiro Valdes is not the techno-geek you were expecting. Rather, the 77-year old Valdes is an old-hand apparatchik of the Cuban government with apparently quite a few skeletons in his closet.

I knew nothing about this man's background before writing this, so the question that first came to my mind when I began reading about him: in what country can a 77-year old man be Minister of Information Technology? And how is a Cuban government official going to help us solve an electricity crisis, when Cuba has been mired in one for years?

The sign reads: "If you can't stand Chavez, join him. Chavez loves you. He was sent by God to free Venezuela from the Yankee Empire."

I've asked it thrice, I've asked it ten times: is there anyone normal left in chavismo?

PS.- Anyone know what "333 Alfa y Omega" stands for? As far as I can tell, it's some sort of evangelical church group, but I'm not sure.

Yup, I get pretty obsessive when it comes to election-related data. At great cost to my sleep rhythms, marital peace and general hygiene, I've spent the last 48 hours trying to make some projections for September's elections to the National Assembly. 

Specifically, I was keen to try to get a specific, circuit-by-circuit estimate of the effects that gerrymandering is likely to have on September's election. We all know CNE set out to screw us by redrawing the AN's circuits' boundries, but how well did they succeed?

Here's the gist of it:

As expected, the map is rigged. The circuits CNE came up with mean the opposition would need to get north of 52.7% of the popular vote to get a simple majority in the National Assembly. In fact, there's a very real chance that the government will keep control of the Assembly on the basis of a minority of the popular vote. Lindo, ¿no?

Assuming the proportion of chavistas-to-oppositores within a given parroquia is relatively stable over time, I estimate that if the opposition wins a 50%+1 vote majority of September's popular vote, the government would still win a whopping 35 seat majority in the AN: it'd be 100 chavistas to 65 opositores. And the government could get a 3/4ths parliamentary supermajority on as little as 55% of the popular vote.

So the map's certainly rigged, but then the country as a whole is rigged, so that's not really news. To my mind, what's interesting is that CNE wasn't really as aggressive as they might have been. If they'd really put their minds to it - if, say, they'd carved up crazy circuits that cross state lines or split parroquias in two - they could've done much better...by which I mean much, much worse.

As it stands, it's not unimaginable that the opposition could turn the system's quirks to its advantage. As we've discussed before, the socio-economic fundamentals are just plain awful for the government this year: I mean, you know Chávez has it tough when the country's going through stagflation and that's not even one of the three strikes he's ponchao for. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the chavista machine could sputter,  chavista turnout collapses, the protest vote runs away with it, and the opposition turns 56% of the popular vote into 63% of the seats in the AN. Imagine that?!

...and everyday is exactly the same weird, warped reality as the day before, and nothing you do matters...

Yup, it's February 2nd...Happy Groundhog Day, everybody!

So with the government threatening to throw Laureano Márquez in jail for the crime of writing that the government is dictatorial, in fact, dictatorial enough to throw a writer in jail merely for writing that the government is dictatorial, in fact, dictatorial enough to throw a writer in jail for writing that the government is dictatorial, in fact...the thing I find myself wondering is: couldn't this sort of thing create an infinite-irony-loop that compromises the fabric of the space-time continuum and causes reality to collapse in on itself?

Alright, people, it's time to get quantitative about September's elections. Exactly how many seats are we likely to get? What are the real, not hypish-effects of gerrymandering? What would happen if we got the same share of the vote in September we got in the regional elections in 2008? How many seats is that? And what if we did 5% better than we did back then? How about 10% better? 

I don't know the answers to those questions, but I do now have the key tool you need to find them.

In this Excel worksheet, kindly contributed by Melenúo, you get a digest of all the district changes CNE pulled as part of their gerrymandering exercise this year, alongside results from previous elections in the 8 states (+DC) affected. Melenúo's first, rough approximation suggests that if the votes are distributed exactly as they were in 2009's referendum, chavismo would get 123 seats to our 42: that's 75% of the seats on the basis of 54% of the votes.

The caveat is that just eight of their seats are directly attributable to the 2010 gerymander: even with the 2005 districts, the government would've gotten 115 seats to our 50 (or 69.7% of the seats on the basis of 54% of the votes.) Thing is, the circuitos were already pretty aggressively gerrymandered, and morocha-shenanigans were already in place to magnify the seat-haul of the single largest group.

But to burrow deeper into the data what we really need is a bit of collaboration. So if this kind of thing is your idea of a fun Sunday morning, download the sheet and go at it.

"Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense."

-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

[I'm re-reading this now, and while chavismo is much closer to Arendt's idea of dictatorship than to her much more radical understanding of totalitarianism - a term she reserved for what Stalin and Hitler did after they had crushed any semblance of organized opposition - some of her quotes about the latter definitely spark that flash of recognition...]

(No, I am not being facetious)

The opposition umbrella group Mesa de Unidad announced today that it would not meet its January 31st deadline to announce its unity candidates. Instead, it pushed the deadline to February 10th.

In a carefully-worded press release, the group said the gerrymandering being done by the chavista-controlled National Electoral Council has made it impossible to meet the deadline.

We've grown accostumed to using the opposition politicians as our personal piñatas (guilty as charged). But credit where credit is due.

They couldn't meet their deadline, so they told us, providing a perfectly valid excuse. Best of all, they did so in a professional and timely manner. And they made sure we know they continue to work on this most pressing issue.

Juan Cristobal's last post - particularly that one-liner about there being "no one normal left in chavismo" - made a few people in the comments section, myself included, pretty uncomfortable.

Of course, I'm in no position to go around casting first stones when it comes to flipping my shit over something crazy Chávez just said and lashing out with a post I probably wouldn't have written otherwise. These things happen. I'm pretty sure Juan'll be the first to admit that post came from the gut more than the head.

But that still leaves the question: did Juan commit a "gaffe" - an involuntary expression of unpalatable truth - or did he just plain old put his foot in his mouth? And, come to think of it, what exactly happened to chavismo's sense of normality? Where did it go?

I think the difficulty has to do with chavismo's dual status as both a political movement and something that more and more ressembles a millenarian cult.

While chavismo as a political movement clearly includes millions of normal, sane, decent people who for one reason or another - from gratefulness for social programs to a deep disgust towards the old elite to a general sense that "people like me vote for Chávez" - support the  regime, the not-terribly-comfortable reality is that those aren't the people who now govern Venezuela. In order to get into a position of political influence and power within the state chavismo has wrought, you need to be a fully signed up member of the Chávez Cult. And while the chavista movement has plenty of normal in it, the Chávez Cult has banished it from its ranks.

We must not mince words here: the structure of belief of the Chávez Cult is not normal. We've gone over it in this blog a million times, but it bears repeating:

• The earnest belief that what is at stake here is "saving the world".
• The determination to create a "new man" freed from normal human failings.
• The belief in an earthly utopia that's just around the corner but can only be attained once the cult's foes have been crushed.
• The literal - not figurative - demonization of those foes.
• The sincere expectation that every single bad thing that happens happens because evil people have conspired to make it happen.
• The belief in the mystical power of those enemies and the unidimensional assertion of their unalloyed evil.
• The dualistic structure that arises from splitting the world between two neat, clearly delineated, unambiguously incompatible groups: one that's completely good, pure and virtuous  ("us") and another that's unambiguously evil, dirty, vicious out-group ("them").
• The general indifference, indeed contempt, towards any fact that cannot be reconciled with that dualistic structure.

These are not "political" views in any intelligible sense of that word. This is the belief system of a cult. It's a way of organizing an understanding of reality that rests not on a set of social beliefs or on a collection of class interests but rather on a metaphysics of conviction: the conviction that you are personally called on to take part in the ultimate, epoch-defining struggle between good and evil and that you will, in the end, be victorious.

And no, it's not normal. Relativism is deeply misplaced here. Governments that treat politics as a transcendent battle between good and evil are bound to devolve into murderous violence, because the structure of their belief systems demand it.

After all, if you were truly, intimately convinced that you were fighting, literally, to save humanity from evil and usher in an era of universal peace, brotherhood and good will, and that the only thing delaying utopia was the opposition of a devilish fringe of wreckers, wouldn't you pull that trigger?

Of course you would.