The Cypriot presidential election (in the Greek part of the island) is now concluded. Today’s runoff was won by Demetris Christofias (55.4% to 46.6% for Ioannis Kasoulides).
But the remarkable thing is what happened a week ago, in the first round. The incumbent, Tassos Papadopoulos, failed to even make the runoff (Kasoulides led the first round, 33.51%, then Christofias 33.29%, and Papadopoulos 31.79%).
Where presidents are eligible for immediate reelection, defeat is pretty rare. Failing to place even in the top two must be really rare. Can anyone think of another case? I can’t.1
Presidential elections that are this close among the top three are likewise very rare. I have a dataset for a project in which I have 124 presidential elections, and the only one similar would be Uruguay in 1994: 32.3 – 31.2 – 30.6 in a race decided by plurality; however, given the Uruguayan system at that time, those are party, rather than candidate votes.2 Ecuador has some cases very close among the top three in a field in which no one even broke 30% (in a first round). Those 124 cases are all from Latin America. There may be examples elsewhere, but off the top of my head, none come to mind.
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- Perhaps Jacques Chirac deserves an honorable mention here. As the incumbent he managed less than 20% in his reelection bid in 2002, but that was a plurality and he did manage to win, thanks to facing Le Pen in the runoff. [↩]
- Thus Uruguay is a special case that arguably could be ruled inadmissible here. Under the former system of Uruguay the winner was the candidate with the most votes within the party with the plurality–essentially a presidential election by “open-list plurality.” [↩]
In the US, it happened in 1912, when incumbent President Taft came in third in both the popular and electoral votes, behind Wilson and former President Roosevelt.
Seed planted by Joffré — 25 February 2008 @ 03:25
The equivalent under a parliamentary system would be an incumbent prime minister’s party losing almost all its seats in a single election, eg Kym Campbell in Canada, 1993 (from 169 seats to 2 out of 295) and Adolfo Suárez González in Spain, 1982 (from 168 seats to 2 out of 350). Admittedly Suárez had left his old party (Unión de Centro Democrático) and started a new one (Centro Democrático y Social) during the preceding parliamentary term.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 February 2008 @ 07:57
The 2002 election in Bolivia was 22.5, 20.9, 20.9-a slightly smaller gap than between the top 3 in Uruguay. Of course, this is like the Ecuador examples where nobody broke 30%.
Seed planted by Matt — 25 February 2008 @ 11:53
Or possibly sad cases like John Howard who became in November only the second Prime Minister of Australia to lose both his parliamentary majority and his own seat. Weirdly enough both PMs that have suffered this indignity had introduced radical industrial relations laws that leaned heavily in favour of employers.
Seed planted by Alan — 25 February 2008 @ 13:12
We had a similar experience at the subnational level in Argentina, where the incumbent candidate for mayor, Jorge Telerman, couldn’t reach the runoff for the government of the City of Buenos Aires last year. Besides, I don’t have any other case worldwide at the top of my head.
Seed planted by Juan Pablo — 25 February 2008 @ 14:47
There are a couple of African examples. In Congo-Brazzaville, the incumbent president, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, won 16.9% at the 1992 presidential election and came in third. (He returned to power by force 5 years later). In the Central African Republic, incumbent president André Kolingba won 12.1% at the 1993 presidential election and came in fourth! In both cases, these elections were deemed as pretty much free and fair (perhaps not least because the incumbents did so badly), though they were also the founding democratic elections after a period of autocracy. So, the situation is not quite the same as in Cyprus!
Seed planted by Robert Elgie — 25 February 2008 @ 17:08
As Alan notes, it was frequently predicted *before* the 2007 election that Howard might, like Stanley Bruce in 1929, lose his own seat after introducing radical new industrial relations laws. And so it came to pass…
(The downside for Kevin Rudd of history repeating itself is that the Scullin Labor Govt that defeated Lord Bruce only lasted one term before it was swept away by the Great Depression.)
I suppose a US equivalent would be a presidential candidate failing to carry his/her own State – although s/he could still be president (eg, Gore in 2000 sans Lepore); the loss would be almost solely symbolic.
But BTST, a PM could still hang on for a few months while the party arranged for another MP to retire and trigger a by-election.
However, this would almost certainly weaken h/her authority in the party room (esp if there are rivals in the PM’s party who sniff blood, eg Costello and Turnbull) – whereas the pesident has 4 whole years without fear of a leadership challenge; Teddy or Pat have to wait for the next New Hampshire primary.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 February 2008 @ 17:29
Thanks for these examples!
I figured there could be an African example or two. I did not have my compilation of African examples handy.
Later on, I realized the 1912 case in the USA.*
So, it is indeed rare, but not unprecedented. So far no one has come up with another example where three candidates all had within a couple percentage points of a third of the vote. So, maybe that remains unprecedented (aside from the example of Uruguayan parties I mentioned above).
* Remember, I do comparative.
Seed planted by MSS — 25 February 2008 @ 18:30
“another example where three candidates all had within a couple percentage points of a third of the vote”
South Korea, Dec 1987: can’t find the exact figures on Wikipedia (ergo, they exist nowhere) but Roh Tae-woo only narrowly edged out Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung. IIRC, all were around 25-35%. The two loesers, ironically, both later served as president also.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 25 February 2008 @ 19:10
Democracy leads to Communism
Is there another case of a Communist being elected president of a democratic country? By an absolute majority of the votes cast?
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 26 February 2008 @ 01:02
RoK, 1987, was not nearly so close:
36.6 RTW
28.0 KYS
27.0 KDJ
It was, of course, a plurality election.
Seed planted by MSS — 26 February 2008 @ 01:06
Thanks MSS. My mistake re ROK ’97 about the vote totals, although I got the range right, and a 10% spread is proportionately smaller if it’s 27-37 than 25-35. Here, the third-place candidate had 73.8% as many supporters as the first-place candidate – whereas, say, in the 1992 US election, Perot’s vote was “only” 43.9% of Clinton’s and in the 1983 British election, the Liberal/ Social Democrat Alliance’s vote was “only” 59.9% of the Tories’ support level.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 26 February 2008 @ 03:45
And in Cyrpus 2008, the third candidate had 94.9% of the first candidate’s votes!
Seed planted by MSS — 26 February 2008 @ 22:06