Outcomes of Electoral Engineering in the 2018 Turkish Parliamentary Elections

• In Event: Politics of Electoral System Reform

Abstract

The ruling party in Turkey, the AKP, made an ex-post mistake by changing the electoral law before the parliamentary elections in 2018. The new apparentement provision allowed parties to make electoral alliances and the alliances’ total votes could then be used to meet the threshold. Surprisingly, the MHP met the threshold in the election, while one opposition party, the İP, failed to do so. AKP lost the parliamentary majority as a result. We estimate election results using four alternative scenarios by using a novel formula developed by Flis, Słomczyński, & Stolicki (2020) with a correction outlined in Evci (forthcoming). We identify all parties that made ex-post mistakes in supporting electoral reform and evaluate the reform’s political consequences.

Authors

• Ugurcan Evci, University of California, Irvine

• Marek M. Kaminski, University of California, Irvine