Moldova & other updates

Results have been coming in this morning from the presidential runoff in Moldova – you can read my report on the first round here. With 99.3% of polling places now reporting, it’s a decisive win for incumbent pro-European Maia Sandu, who has 55.2% of the vote, about 172,000 votes ahead of her pro-Russian challenger Alexandr Stoianoglo. That total may come up slightly since the few results outstanding are from expatriate voters, who tend to be pro-European.

It’s a surprisingly comfortable victory given the strong showing by pro-Russian candidates in the first round, and particularly the very narrow win then for the referendum supporting European Union membership. Sandu backed the referendum strongly, but the idea was that it was supposed to help her rather than the other way around.

This could just show the difference between the advantage of incumbency in an election and the tendency of doubtful voters to vote “no” in a referendum. But it could also indicate that Sandu’s claims of Russian interference in the first round were justified, and that either voters or authorities (or both) were more on their guard this time. Either way, it keeps Moldova on the European track for the immediate future.

Also time to check up on loose ends from a few other recent stories.

Britain

As foreshadowed last month when we looked at the Conservative Party leadership contest, Kemi Badenoch has been duly elected as Britain’s new leader of the opposition. She beat Robert Jenrich in the members’ ballot with 56.5% of the vote, a margin of rather more than 12,000 votes. Turnout was about 71% but, not surprisingly in view of the party’s recent fortunes, there are a lot fewer members than there were last time there was a vote.

As the first black leader of a major party Badenoch gives a sort of progressive aura to very right-wing views. After the Tories’ landslide defeat in July she has her work cut out, but Labour has not got off to a good start in government so there will certainly be opportunities for her.

Austria

Austria voted a little over a month ago in an election that returned the far right Freedom Party as the largest party (see earlier report here). But the other parties all made it clear they would not co-operate with it in government, at least as long as Herbert Kickl remains leader. So president Alexander Van der Bellen quite properly turned to the leader of the next largest party, the centre-right People’s Party, and asked him to try to form a majority coalition.

Cue outrage from the far right’s increasingly open sympathisers in the west. But as we’ve noted here many times, parliamentary systems work on majorities, not pluralities. Centre-right leader Karl Nehammer will try to reach agreement with the Social Democrats and either the liberals or Greens; he may not succeed, but it is clearly the most likely route to a government that will have the confidence of parliament.

Georgia

I noted the other day that there was no “statistical smoking gun” to confirm the opposition’s claims of fraud in the recent Georgian election. Now, however, there’s a detailed report from pollster HarrisX, analysing the differences between its exit poll and the official results. It says it has “identified 27 districts (out of 73 total districts in Georgia …) where the large discrepancies between our exit poll results and official results cannot be explained by statistical variance, suggesting potential voting irregularities.” Edison Research has reached similar conclusions.

That’s not likely to have any direct impact on the power struggle within the country between the opposition (backed by the president) and the Georgian Dream government. (Nor, for that matter, has much clearer proof succeeded so far in dislodging the Venezuelan government.) But it may help a little in swaying opinion in the international community.

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UPDATE, Tuesday: With counting now complete in Moldova, Sandu finishes on 55.4%, a margin of not quite 180,000 votes.