September Strategy Notes, Part 2: The Circuits
Note: You can download the PowerPoint slides this post is based on in either language:
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:
This first map is pretty straightforward: it just shows what would happen if, this year, people voted just as they did on 2D, 2007, when the government's proposed Constitutional Reform was defeated. Even though the opposition won a majority of the popular vote that day, the map CNE's drafted is, erm, not kind to us in such a scenario:
To pad that out with the "list" and indigenous results, a straight-up re-run of the 2007 vote this year would see us get just 65 out of 165 Asamblea seats.
Didn't believe the map was rigged? Check this out:
Going a little deeper into the data, I divided the map into five categories:
- Circuits where the government blew us away by more than 10 points (solid government territory)
- Circuits where they won by a comfortable but not overwhelming margin (places that lean towards chavismo)
- Circuits where the winner had less than a 5 point lead (toss ups)
- Circuits where we won by 5 to 10 points (lean oppo)
- Circuits where our lead was comfortably above 10 points (solid oppo).
In effect, in 2007, the government won circuits representing 53 seats by more than 5%. We won circuits housing 32 seats by 5% or more:
That implies that if we retain all the areas we won in 2007 and make a clean sweep of those Toss-Up circuits, we could get 57 seats to the government's 53:
By the same token, if the government swept the Toss-ups, they'd end up with 78 circuit seats to our 32.
Probably the more reasonable estimation is that we'll split the toss-ups, which would give us 44.5 seats to their 65.5 seats. (I guess that 0.5 seat means Rafael Simón Jiménez is poised for a comeback!)
If it did come out like that, and filling in a reasonable list-estimation, I think our central scenario has to be that in a 50%-50% election, the government wins 95 seats and we win 70.
What's interesting, though, is that for all of CNE's gerrymandering, there are quite a lot of competitive seats out there:
The outer-edges of Maracaibo are toss-ups, as is the Costa Oriental del Lago:
There are tons of competitive circuits in the Andes, including Rubio, the Northeast of Táchira state, Ejido and El Vigía in Mérida as well as the Northeast district there, and even the Catatumbo region and the south of Lake Maracaibo:
The Center-West region is pockmarked with competitive seats as well, including the North of Barquisimeto and the South of Valencia, each of which carry a delectable 3 seats. San Felipe-Nirgua, in Yaracuy, looks competitive too. Punto Fijo and the West of Falcón state (not on this map) are toss-ups too:
It's disappointing but not surprising that the Caracas Metro Area is one of the least competitive in the country: this area is really spacially segregated, so gerrymandering was pretty straightforward. But a couple of districts may imaginably be within reach, including 23 de Enero (imagine that!) and the circuit CNE cobbled together out of El Valle, Coche and Santa Rosalía.
The east of the country has some races worth watching, too. Carúpano and Rio Caribe, the Anaco region in the West of Anzoátegui, and most of Bolívar state - including the two seats in Ciudad Bolívar, are up for grabs. Maturín's three seats are probably out of reach, but I think we need to consider the three-member circuit for San Felix and Puerto Ordaz a bit of a wildcard. Ciudad Guayana has always been deep red, but the electric crisis has hit the region especially hard and anything could happen.
Of course, this is just one way to slice up the scenarios, and not necessarily the best one. A longtime reader (whose name I'll reserve to protect the procrastrinatory) has done a similar exercise on the basis of the 2008 Regional Elections results. He proceeded a bit differently than I did, seeking to identify those circuits the opposition might most reasonably target to try to get a majority. The results he gets are somewhat different from mine, due to the differences in voting patterns between 2007 and 2008:
The Gerrymandered map really comes into its own in this kind of scenario. If voting patterns from 2008 are repeated this year the government's going to milk almost 75% of the seats out of just 53.5% of the vote:
That would obviously be a disaster, so the question is which of the seats the government would've won with the 2008 votes the opposition is best advised to go after. Seven of those seem like "low hanging fruit": circuits in urban areas run by oppo mayors or governors. The opposition has to win those.
Beyond that, it needs to engineer a nationwide swing that puts it into contention in 45 other seats which the government won by less than a 20% margin last time. Those are their target seats:
Fight the government to a draw in those target circuits, with this damn map, you still come up short.
So even assuming the opposition gets all its must-wins and picks up half of its target seats, the "Central Scenario" based on the 2008 vote split still leaves the government with a majority.
The upshot is simple: 50%+1 vote is good enough for them this year, but not good enough for us. We're not just fighting chavismo here, we're fighting the map as well. So we're going to need something in the 52-53% range to have a shot at taking the majority.
No two elections are quite alike, so a quick glance at the 2007-based map and the 2008 one shows quite some variation in what we can consider a "swing circuit":
In the end, a lot will depend on the specific candidates each side picks, as well as on the strength of chavista turnout. I have a feeling that the chavista machine is going to have a very hard time frog marching their people out to the polls in the kind of environment the country's likely to be facing in September. So my sense is that the government could find itself staring into a polling abyss by the middle of the year.
How they'll respond to that is anybody's guess. One thing I'm sure of, though: it won't be pretty.
Francisco Toro
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Greatness comes...
... to those who put in the hours. Great work Quico.
I am amazed...
As Juan Cristobal said, this is the stuff of greatness: I have forwarded it to the people I know at La Mesa.
The analysis is great, and it goes well with the numbers cruched yesterday by the MSM in Caracas (the Seijas poll, the Universal's projections), as well as the other kind of tidbits: Chavez saying that the opposition was fragmented in 2000 pieces, the disheartening COPEI affair, etc.
The late Boris Bunimov wrote a book in the late sixties, early seventies, titles "Sociología Electoral Venezolana". It was a groundbreaking work of statistical-electoral analysis. He never wrote a follow up, although he came to a number of conclusions which were used by Venezuelan Political Science in the coming years (the West is green, the Centre and the Llanos are white, Sucre and Margarita were yellow, and Caracas was never, ever, yellow-nor-white-nor-green, but rather a tossup among harebrained outsiders).
That being said, you could turn this work into an electoral history of the regime (to uphold the Caripito factor as-a-matter-of-science). I can supply the history.
It is a great work, and I remember it was the maps that brought me here in the first place. How do you edit the maps?
Thanks GTAvex - it's all down to qGIS
But the real praise should go to the people who made qGIS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_GIS - the world's most addictive software for map nerds.
If yo are a map nerd do go and check stange maps!
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/
really adictive.
Cheers,
LuisF
Where are our new leaders born in secondary cities?
Excellent work.
There is a piece of the puzzle I think we need to consider with particular attention:
I would say that 3/4 of chavista honchos, starting with Hugo of Sabaneta, were born in what I call now "secondary cities", or as we used to call them, monte y culebras: any urban centre of more than 5000 people but not the capital, Maracaibo or Valencia (CMV).
Very few new oppo leaders were born there. Actually, one who did was Oscariz, who is one of the most "monte y culebra" guys of the New Wave: Maracay of all places. Apart from him you have Tretaceous-age Ledezma (Los Morros, I think) and Andrés Velázquez (somewhere in Bolivar, I suppose).
And yet: most Venezuelans are urban, but NOT CMV-people.
I do think Andrés Velázques still has some pull among people in Bolivar, I don't know about Lozórzano outside the Baruta-Eastern-capital area, but perhaps she does. Still, we do not have so many of those figures.
We need people who are well known in their Miguel Pena (Southern Valencia), carabobo-Libertador region, in their Pedernales, etc, but who are not
just some hated eternal proto-cacique.
One of the problems is that there are often some local caudillos who are hindering the development of new local talent unless it is under their foot. That may be the case with the Salas clan (what is the ideological difference between PJ and all the other "liberal-copei like beasts"?
In Yaracuy there is no real Copei, but convergencia guys, who claim to be more calderistas than Caldera, although there is no real ideology behind that (Convergencia was just Caldera's split http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergencia_%28Venezuela%29
)
None of them have a real ideology (not even Chavismo, but they have Hugo), fo them it is foremost about them as caudillos., As there are no primaries they just create a new party and hope to gain momentum one day, at least become "the caudillo" of one state...but they are often a hindrance.
In other nations you often have 2 or three "communist" parties, or far-right parties, but even in Chile there is no such a thing as in Venezuela: like over a dozen "christian democrat parties" and dozen or more "social democratic countries". I wish we could put them all in one room and ask them in front of the cameras to explain why there are 12 of them for each of the major "ideological" branches.
Anyway: we cannot solve these basic isssues before September, but at least we can demand very loudly from the old proto-caudillos in the different regions to cooperate and then support new and generally likeable and charismatic people who have a feeling for those regions and who have done their homework in finding out about local needs, in case they have to be imported from the big cities (but really: we should try to grow local products).
Great Job Quico!
A little depressing but great job. It reminded me of this:
So I'm telling you there's a chance...YEEEEEEEAAAHRR!
Maybe I should have made this clearer: these maps show where we'd get with an electorate split more or less down the middle.
With a 50-50 electorate, we're screwed. CNE's cartography makes sure of that.
But there's nothing pre-ordained about a 50-50 electorate. And as I keep writing, everything points to an Annus Horribilis for the government...these guys are so ponchaos they have five strikes against them, not three: electricity, water, crime, recession and inflation.
In a five-strike environment, the PSUV machine is going to have a hell of a time getting people to turn out as usual. They'll try. But how do you convince someone with no power, no water, no job, no security and no savings to go and support you? Chamo, that's tough. Very tough.
So I don't think we're looking at a 50-50 electorate. I think we're looking at a 52-48 or even a 54-46 electorate. And if it comes to that we're in a whole different ball game.
Because the map only saves chavismo if they win, or if they lose by a point or two.
But if their turnout shrivels up and dies...lo más probable es que quien sabe.
It's the maps...
No you made your point very clearly and I had heard you and others say it before. It's just that the graphical depiction brings it home very effectively.
They thing here is that those who define the oppo's strategy for these elections have to ponder the fact that people need to be very aware that "winning" in this case means a majority in the AN not getting 50%+1 of the votes and doing that without discouraging people to vote/participate.
Road to über-excellence
The maps are wonderful and all. Now, it may be interesting to add
the number of seats at play.
For instance, the yellow area in carabobo gets three seats while all the rest just one (even if the very antichavista blue one has 2/3 of the population of the yellow area.
Funny and right on point
Very funny, Pixar. And that's the attitude to have, right? It's certainly better than moping.
wow
Wow, and triple wow.
An unbelievably useful piece of analysis.
Many thanks, Quico.
Thanks! Be sure to circulate those slides!
Gracias chama...
Lets try to see if we can difuse those slides pretty widely, no?
Thank you!!
Great analysis,
I think that you should talk to Eugenio Martinez http://twitter.com/puzkas. He is the journalist that produces those analysis for El Universal. I think that he is making a mistake using the numbers from La Enmienda, because in that election Chavez presidency was directly on stake, and that always increses the votes for chavismo.
In La Enmienda those chavistas that didn't vote on 2D07, went to vote because it was Chavez's presidency on stake. In this case those light chavistas that like Chavez but not their "people", might stay at their houses.
Thanks
The maps, do not have the new
The maps, do not have the new electoral circuits. You count petare as one circuit, also libertador is doing wrong.
Petare IS one circuit!
Petare Parrish of Sucre Municipality is a circuit (Miranda 3).
Here's the CNE document setting out the Gerrymandered districts.
http://cne.gov.ve/elecciones/2010/parlamentarias/documentos/CIRCUNSCRIPC...
I sweated BLOOD to put those circuits into qGIS...trust me, they are right.
ft
Petare
Hi Quico,
Great Job, but I think you didn't separate petare from leoncio martinez. You should merge petare with guarenas and guatire. Does it affect significantly the results?
You're half right
You're right that I didn't split Petare from Leoncio Martínez graphically on the map (Leoncio Martínez is so little it barely shows.) But the underlying data is separated.
Please refer to CNE's document setting out the circuitos, which I linked to above. Petare is a stand-alone circuito this year. It's Caucagüita, La Dolorita and Fila de Mariches parishes of Sucre Municipality that got stuck on to the Guarenas-Guatire circuit, not Petare.
And in unrelated news, they're not even pretending anymore...
I presume you guys already read about this one:
AN propone normativa para sancionar a diputados que “salten la talanquera”
They're not even pretending they care about freedom anymore.
OBEY BIG BROTHER! OBEY, GODDAMMIT, OBEY!!!
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Chacumbele is God, and when He asks you to kiss His Holy Butt and lick His Holy Feet, YOU KISS HIS BUTT AND LICK HIS FEET WITH A SMILE ON YOUR FACE!!!11!!!
Personal Question Cuz
Ive been reading your analysis for a few months and I am impressed, even more if I take into account that you haven't lived in Venezuela for a long time.
Dont take it the wrong way, but how do you manage to live your life if your work (I am guessing that writing about Venezuela is your source of income), your obsession and basically your mind is thousands of kilometers away from where you live?
Would you ever live in Venezuela again? or are you happy with visiting once in a while and getting the heck out of there asap?
Just trying to get your pint of view. Ive been living overseas for a few years too and sometimes I just want to leave everything behind and go back to fight against the bloody Chavistas again.
What da ya reckon? Am I homesick or what?!?
Good job!
This is excellent work, Quico. Quick questions: a) Is anybody at all doing similar studies on the opposition side at a national scale? (given the ongoing state of disarray of the oppo coalition leadership). I assume JV Carrasquero et. al. have been doing so for some time; b) Probably this shows that Chavistas master-minds did everything within their reach to gerrymander this election as much as possible... contributing to keep the country's deficit of representation overall. c) How do we go after the oppo leaning and toss-up circuits? Who will run for these circuits? Any thoughts?
In some ways, the Gerrymandering was mild
Actually, I disagree that "Chavista master-minds did everything within their reach to gerrymander this election as much as possible". I think they were almost prim about it, as you can see in my post today.
Think of all those Toss-Up districts in the Andes. If they'd REALLY wanted to be aggressive about it, they could've lumped in La Grita and Ejido with the West of Barinas into a Massive, four-member chavista constituency. This wouldn't be legal, of course, but what court is going to overrule CNE on a decision that favors the government!?
Same thing in Caracas: Lump in El Valle Coche and 23 de Enero into a big, three member circuit with the West of DC and you've made a huge safe chavista enclave. Or put Anaco together with Guárico East and you save that seat.
The funny thing about that map is that it leaves many more competitive districts than was strictly necessary. These guys really could've taken some lessons from the Texas legislature: they leave ZERO competitive seats after the Gerrymander...that's how the big boys do it.
I would have loved to see one key comparison
Quico, I wetn through the slides and found very interesting. However, I would have liked to see the same analysis but with a the OLD circuits. In other words, how much do the new circuits influence the outcome, when compared with the old cricuits.
If we had the 2007 or the 2008 results.
Exactly!
That is exactly my question. There are *important* numbers to be crunched here.
We need to look forward, Bruni, not back...
At first I thought this would be an important question too, Bruni, but Juan kind of changed my mind here. The gerrymander is a fait accompli, and there's really nothing to be gained by brooding over exactly how much they screwed us.
These are the rules of the game. We know they're rigged. We still choose to participate. Given that that's the case, there's nothing to be gained by looking back. Much better to concentrate on how we can take the weak hand we've been dealt and play it to win.
(OK, ok, I'll also admit that I decided not to do it because I realized it would've taken at least 8 or 10 hours of putzing around with spreadsheets and mapping software to produce the analysis you want...given the above, I just didn't think the cost-benefit calculus warranted obsessing about it.)
I did it with Carabobo
I used preference the mayor results of 2008, though. Results are similar anyway for other events:
in my state we would have got 4 deputies out of 7.
Now, unless we do something in Miguel Pena and Urdaneta parishes (more in the first) and Carabobo's Libertador, we would get only one.
Quic' showed in the maps here the new region.
It seems Carabobo was particularly hard hit by gerrymandering, more than Miranda. It was easy: they took away San Diego (middle-middle class as opposed to upper-middle, but very very very very oppo) away from the Guacara-San Joaquín-Diego Ibarra, making the area with more votes for the dictatorship according to 2008 data, and joined it with very-blue Northern Valencia-Naguanagua in spite of the mountain in the middle...I suppose because of "idiosyncratic reasons", as our dear friend Tibisay said.
They split Valencia municipality and joined it with Libertador, weakening the opposition. Now we have one extremely oppo district with one deputy and 2/3 of the population of the newly created South district that has three deputies.
We could still turn the tables if someone does good work in the South. I hope they do.
Things are worse than in the capital: electricity is a big problem, water, crime.
I will say it in Latin:
Salas está súper agüevoneado and he is not cooperating. And a lot of witnesses want to be all cozy one next to the other in the very secure Northern regions of Valencia, while we desperately need to invade the South.
I worked for the oppo in the South and although support there could be growing, I know how scary it can get, how the chavistas threaten people...unless we have the numbers.