By Julian Dierkes
I was about to head to the countryside until election day with likely fewer opportunities to post but now, inclement weather has led to delay of that plan, so a quick set of notes before I leave the city.
General Calm
Compared to what I recall from previous election, downtown Ulaanbaatar seems not to be involved in the election very much.
The new central posterboards for election posters have led to a lack of visibility of the election in the street. I noted in a previous post that there seemed to be many more campaign offices in more residential areas, but they remain absent from the city centre.
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It is difficult to tell whether this calm is a sign of apathy among political parties or just the impact of changes to the electoral law. If it is the latter – i.e. the mandated focus on the official poster boards where parties have to equally show all district candidates – then this would seem to be another hurdle for smaller parties to climb. When campaigning is restricted in this way, how can you get a message to voters. The answer given is, of course, social media which Marissa has taken a closer look at. But surely, this cannot be the entire answer as there are some voters who will not be reached by a social media campaign and some who might not be persuaded by such a campaign.
But, this calm may also be restricted to the city centre.
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Where’s Waldo, the Candidate
A “where’s Waldo”-style image is called a Wimmelbild in German, wimmeln is to crowd, probably an onomatopoeia, Bild is image. I always liked that word.
Anyway, candidates and their campaign events are hard to find. I and others have tried to reach out to candidates we know individually, as well as to campaign organizations to try to get schedules of appearances and rallies, but are not getting answers. It is unclear why that might be. Schedules are only being released day-of, and various contacts seem to be hesitant to give out information. It is unclear whether they are nervous about foreigners attending election events (it is not like I am looking to be on stage, I quietly stand in the back, take in atmosphere and speeches), or generally nervous about candidates’ schedules. What that also means, however, is that it seems unlike that voters are very aware of candidates’ plans.
DP
According to most views around town, the DP continues to be in disarray. One event that was advertised online and which I was therefore able to attend, seemed to indicate this as well. It also pointed to the struggle to let voters know about events, or to rely on social media entirely for such announcements, as this event was very poorly attended and did not seem to capture casual pedestrians’ attention.
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In principle, this was an event I was especially interested in as it involved candidates from the party list. One of the strategic challenges I had been thinking about is how a party list candidate might campaign and how party organizations might allocate resources to party list candidates. Obviously, as a party list candidate, one would want to build the general appeal of the party and could therefore be a candidate anywhere. Given variable places on the list and thus likelihood of being elected, that may mean that candidates are campaign not only for others, but also may be campaigning for others who have a much higher likelihood of being elected.
In the case of this event, it was three younger candidates from the DP party list who were campaigning. The DP lists is generally being criticized for offering very little to voters to capture an “out with the old” sentiment among voters, in contrast to the MPP list that seems designed to do just that. But these three younger candidates were probably meant to exude a freshness or innocence given their ages and lack of previous political experience.
This kind of voter segmentation might make a lot of sense from the campaign’s perspective as well, i.e. if you are trying to promote the party generically to increase the vote share in the proportional representation, perhaps useful to segment voters and offer particular focus areas. In this case, this was youth, under the slogan of “Democracy Calling”. Given the lack of a crowd that came, the puns on that slogan are obvious.
All in all, only about fifty people turned up, many of them wearing DP-insignia t-shirts and carrying DP tote bags, suggesting that they were working for the campaign not unrelated voters. Perhaps the purpose of this event, right in front of the Beatles statue with the State Department Store as a further background, was to film it for social media or other use. Surely different camera angles might mask the absence of an audience. But even more shocking – to me – than the lack of an audience and the apparent lack of surprise or frustration with the lack of an audience, the candidates delivered a very “traditional” campaign event, i.e. they stood on a stage and lectured voters. This is Gen Z campaigning? It did not elicit a single moment of applause, until E Bat-Uul showed up.
I have seen this in previous campaigns as well, i.e. an event where each of the three candidates could have easily sat down on a park bench and had a conversation with <10 voters, maybe even solicited their views or challenges and offered some discussion of how the DP program responded to those. Instead, the three candidates lectured.
MPP
Many of the discussions that I have joined have centred on interpretations of the MPP party list. The consensus remains that the composition was strategically very astute in that it has countered the impression of the MPP as the staid incumbent, instead signalling some kind of departure. Conversations then focus on identifying individuals on the list who are closely associated with Pres Khurelsukh, while others are more closely affiliated with PM Oyun-Erdene or MPP General Secretary Amarbayasgalant, perhaps even MP Uchral who is happy to tell all listeners that he was the second highest vote-getter in the last parliamentary election.
Vote Splitting
One of the unfortunate things about the absence of exit polling is that as researchers we will not be able to tell how voters behaved. Given the changes in the electoral system and especially the enlargement to 13 electoral districts, that would be particularly interesting.
For example, one might imagine some kind of typology of voters: straight party slate, split vote of major party + additional parties, split vote between major parties, split vote across additional parties (perhaps while voting a major party on the party vote). All of these seem plausible, but we can only speculate about voter behaviour. Where this will be relevant to the current election is to understand what frustrated voters might do if they go to vote. On the one hand, one might expect voter frustration to hurt the MPP, but perhaps also the DP. On the other hand, there may be some district races where frustrated voters are looking for alternatives and either converging on some such alternatives, or splitting their votes across multiple alternatives. The former scenario would lead to some candidates who are not MPP, DP, or even KhUN to be elected to parliament, while the latter would reinforce big party, perhaps MPP-dominance.
Party Finance
One of the changes that the recent party law introduced is more public funding for parties. That funding will be based on how well parties do in the party vote. This might explain why so many parties have chosen to nominate candidates for the party list even when their chances at gaining a seat will be slight. I’m hoping that we will have a post on this topic in the near future.
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