Where to Voter Turnout?

The 2016 General Elections in Zambia are less than a fortnight away - in 10 days time to be precise. At this late stage in the game, discussion seems to have shifted from talking about the popularity of the PF/UPND, the two clear front-runners for the presidency, to talking about what voter turnout will be like on August 11.

Focusing on voter turnout, at this stage, is quite understandable: there's little that the PF/UPND can do now to convince a *significant* fraction of PF/UPND voters to vote for them. Minds are already largely made up. The question now is will voters turn out in large numbers to vote for their preferred candidates?    

So what's been the historical pattern of voter turnout in Zambia's General Elections since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1990?

Figure 1 below plots voter turnout against date of election. The first thing noticeable is that getting a voter turnout of at least 70% has been historically difficult -- the only time this happened was in September 2006 when the turnout was 71%. The average turnout for the 7 elections that have involved choosing a head of state since 1991 is 53% (59% if you exclude the two presidential by-elections in 2008 and 2015).


                               Figure 1: Voter turnout, 1991 to 2015

                                Source: ECZ

The second noticeable pattern from Figure 1 is that in "normal times", relatively low voter turnout has coincided with a change of government (for this conclusion, we need to exclude the extraordinary presidential by elections of 2008 and 2015 -- voter turnout in these elections is a function of many things, not least of which is the fact that the elections are not preceded by an updating of the voters' register given their suddenness). 

Figure 2 below excludes the two presidential by elections of 2008 and 2015, and there it becomes clear that the two lowest voter turnouts (1991 and 2011) coincided with a change of government (I was actually surprised to learn that the momentous elections of 1991 had such low voter turnout!). 

                            Figure 2: Turnout excluding 2008/2015 by elections

                                Source: ECZ

So what could be going on here? At an intuitive level it does make sense why low voter turnout might coincide with a change of government: the many supporters of the once popular ruling party might choose to stay away, because of disillusionment, instead of voting for the opposition party (a protest vote of sorts). At the sametime the relatively fewer supporters of the opposition might come out in full force.

So will this pattern play out on August 11? Only time will tell. And the election on August 11 is different to those that have come before precisely because there’s a rule change. It’s no longer “first-past-the goal post”. The winner has to command a majority to win the election otherwise there’s a second round of voting. And a second round might bring about a change of heart from the ruling party’s protest voters – they might think that the ruling party’s defeat (or lack of clear victory) in round 1 was punishment enough and perhaps the party has learnt its lesson. Or the opposition's near victory in round 1 might scare the ruling party's protest voters into coming out in full force for round 2 -- the thought of the opposition forming government might be too much to bear even though the ruling party has done little for them. 

But all this could be armchair theorizing on my part. So don’t listen to me but vote wisely next week.