Senegalese Presidential Election, February 26th 2012

[minionofmidas]

Strongman Abdolaye Wade to run for another seven year term even though he's 85. Elections in the country have never been particularly fair but always (as in, ever since independence) at least sort of free and did once result in a peaceful transfer of power (getting Wade in).

EDIT: No, actually only since the late 70s.

Youssou N'Dour is running against Wade!

[minionofmidas]

Does anybody have regional figures or maps for any of the past elections? Would be interesting. (Adam Carr has nothing.)

[minionofmidas]

2007

Somebody make me a map pretty please?

[minionofmidas]

Heh, just noticed they created three additional regions since 2007 so that map doesn't reflect the results at the link. And anyways, clicking on "by region" just gets you the departements (the next tier) sorted by region, but not summed. Checking whether the departement map has remained the same since 2007 now... there's a blank map of them on wikipedia.

[minionofmidas]

Seems like it has changed as well... but the wiki blank map reflects the 2007 state of affairs. Haven't checked everywhere. Good enough I guess.

[minionofmidas]

Ah, right then. So what colours for which candidates?

Hmmm... the ruling party is a member in this strange little international party grouping. Third placed Osmane Tanor Dieng obviously needs to be red - nothing socialist about Sedar Senghor's Socialist Party or about it's current remnant, of course, but, well, it's the name.

[minionofmidas]

...but thankfully, the new region creations all consisted of the evelation of a département to region status (and division of it and the mother region into additional départements), so a map by current region was quite possible.

And yeah, I made myself a map from Al's blank. Now you see why I usually let Al do that.



Seck won his home département (but not the region). From what I know, Sagna's map is possibly functional as a standin for a map of the Christian population (except you need to double the shares.)

[minionofmidas]

I lost some time before I decided to restrict myself to just a single greyscale with only five shades...

[minionofmidas]

Given the attitude of the Constitutional Council, I wonder if we could count on some fair results...

I didn't follow this after creating the thread, except for hearing they allowed Wade to run again (not unreasonable) and banned N'dour (not reasonable).

[minionofmidas]

The opposition immediately united the only other time a President failed to get 50%, leading to Wade's election. The President got almost identical shares both round back then.
This is the normal thing to expect in authoritarian or quasi-authoritarian countries with free elections (getting worse if they're not entirely fair the first time round and there's protests after). Reelection depends on an air of inevitability, and failing to win on the first round punctures that hard.

[minionofmidas]

Runoff is tomorrow.

Seeing as Wade got just 35% in the first round (Sall 26%, Niasse 13%, Dieng 11%, Seck 8%, remainder scattered across 9 candidates), he's probably toast. Though who knows.
Needless to say Sall promises to shorten the term back to five years and to make the term limits rules watertight. We'll see how that plays out over the next decade, I suppose.

[minionofmidas]

Can't find a regional breakdown, but every singe eliminated candidate has endorsed Sall.

[minionofmidas]

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"Maturity"? In an 85 year old? More like the opposite - lack of senility.

[minionofmidas]

Youssou N'Dour to join Sall's cabinet.

Wade's share of the vote actually declined between the first and second rounds, from 34.81% to 34.20%.
His raw vote went up by 50k, but turnout increased by 200k to 2.9 million.

[minionofmidas]

Teh map!

[minionofmidas]

Two notes: Sedar Senghor's old party (Dieng) continues to have no stronghold.
No sectional candidates of the southern and southeastern periphery, with the result that these were the incumbent's strongest areas (along with his home region of Djourbel).

[minionofmidas]

Gaël has better ones.

Gael has infinitely more experience.

Interesting about the intraregional differences in Fatick and Thies.