Sacked For taking censured column Journalist asks: 'Were the Turkish Elections Rigged?'

Sacked For taking censured column Journalist asks: 'Were the Turkish Elections Rigged?' (economonitor).

I have been asked by foreign journalists several times over the last few days on whether I feel the elections might have been rigged. Homo Economicus does not have feelings, except under special circumstances, but I can give you some numbers:

While the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) maintained its votes compared to the June 7 elections, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) lost 2 and 1 million votes respectively. Besides, two small parties that had entered the elections jointly in June got 300K less this time.

Last but definitely not the least, there were 1.3 million additional votes compared to June: Of this, 600K were due to new votes (of which 200K were new registered voters) and 700K less invalid votes. Interestingly, more than half of the additional votes were from Istanbul, where the share of invalid votes shrank significantly.

If you do the math, all of this adds up to the 4.5 million extra votes the Justice and Development Party (AKP) got compared to June 7. In other words, the AKP got all the possible votes it could; most of the defections from other parties as well as the additional votes. Add in other flashing red lights, such as the speed of the vote count and early victory declarations in the pro-government media, and you can see why people are suspicious. Hmmm.......Does the Sun Rise in the East? More than once i wonder have they developed a program to manipulate voter results....each time the answer is YES! Read the full story here.

 Related: Statistical study of Turkey’s November election suggests widespread voting manipulation.

Statistical study of Turkey’s November election suggests widespread voting manipulation,

Statistical study of Turkey’s general election suggests widespread vote manipulation. (intellinews).

A statistical study of the voting patterns in Turkey’s November 1 general election found strong evidence that is “consistent with widespread voting manipulation".

That was the conclusion of a paper released by assistant professor Erik Meyersson at Stockholm School of Economics entitled “Digit Tests and the Peculiar Election Dynamics of Turkey’s November Elections", and released on November 4.

The result of the elections came as a shock as the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s defied the almost universal polling consensus and won some 9 percentage points more than expected – just enough to rule alone, but not quite a constitutional majority.


Some have speculated that faced with external and internal instability Turks have turned to a strong leader to see them through uncertain times in what might be called a “Sultan complex". However, drilling down into the voting statistics Meyersson concludes that Sunday’s result was not so much an AKP victory as a defeat for the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP).

The main statistical test the paper explores is the use of the so-called Benford’s Law that is a widespread statistical technique for spotting cheating in polls and has a big body of academic literature behind it.


The way it works is simple: in a fair vote the last number of the final tally for each polling station should be randomly distributed. As humans are very bad at generating random numbers if the vote count has been tampered with then this randomness is destroyed and a discernable pattern emerges.

In a table that measures this frequency of number pairs Meyersson found that, “In all but one cases does  the occurrences of adjacent digits change between November and June for the MHP, and for the HDP there is a statistically significant change in the five largest provinces sample.”

“Overall, this analysis shows evidence that would be consistent with widespread voting manipulation, not proof of it, both in terms of the change in the distribution of last as well as adjacent digits,” Meyersson concludes the paper with.


“Sunday’s landslide victory by the AKP represents a remarkable comeback for a government that according to the overwhelming majority of polling companies looked set to repeat its June loss. Many are now pointing fingers at these pollsters (and analysts overall) asking how they could have been so wrong. But what if they weren’t?” Read and see the full study here.

@Anaminona @selcuksalih @MFS001 pls. Look also @emeyersson https://t.co/YQ9SfJy6eo & https://t.co/9hPcwZgaBw

— Wolfgang (@vilbi) November 7, 2015

#Turkey's number of registered voters has grown by a monthly rate of ~0.14% between June 2011 & June 2015, same for Jun-Nov this yr

— Erik Meyersson (@emeyersson) November 4, 2015

I've been wondering why so few have raised possibility of fraud in #Turkey's election. @emeyersson runs the numbers: https://t.co/imRRGJXy7k

— Tarek Masoud (@masoudtarek) November 5, 2015

VIDEO: Angry voters challenging local election results in Ankara chant 'thieves, burglars'