In your last poll before the elections, your institute predicted that Kemal Kilicdaroglu would have the most votes with 49.1 percent and President Erdogan only 46.9 percent. The result is now reversed. How do you explain that?
We conducted two surveys in May. In the first, Erdogan was 2.5 percentage points ahead. In between, there was an attack on the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, during the rally in Erzurum. We assumed that this incident would turn the tide in Kilicdaroglu’s favour. But in the election we saw that the impact of this event was only temporary. The real question is: why did Erdogan win the election when the economic situation has never been so bad in the last 30 to 40 years? Because AKP voters claim that the cause of the economic crisis does not lie with the Erdogan government, but rather with a ruse by America and the European Union to make Turkey incapable of governing. 53 percent of citizens say that Erdogan cannot solve the problem. But in the case of Kilicdaroglu, 55 percent of citizens say so. When we ask why they are voting for the AKP again despite the crisis, they say Erdogan has managed the economy well in the past. Kilicdaroglu has always been unsuccessful. The situation is similar with an earthquake. The reason why this earthquake caused so much damage is because of the state. But the citizens do not hold Erdogan responsible for this.
Election researcher Özer Sencar from the Metropoll Institute in Ankara
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Image: private
Do you think Kilicdaroglu has a chance of winning the runoff?
The election is over. Erdogan will also win in the second ballot. His regular voters are about 30 to 32 percent of the population. Kilicdaroglu has around 20 points. This is the first reason. Second, for 25 years, Erdogan has won every election he has contested. Kilicdaroglu lost all elections in which he participated. So Erdogan has a track record. We’ve been researching this election every month for two years. Until recently, we also measured the approval ratings for Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas in a duel with Erdogan. In all our investigations, Mansur Yavaş and Imamoglu were higher than Erdogan. But Erdogan was always ahead of Kılıcdaroglu except in the last poll. According to our research, Kılıcdaroglu was the candidate who had no chance of winning against Erdogan. Kilicdaroglu and the opposition were convinced that Erdogan is so unsuccessful that whoever runs against him wins. This was the wrong place. Erdogan is not someone anyone can defeat. Citizens expect a track record of success and strong leadership qualities in the leader who will win the election.
The third candidate Sinan Ogan got more than 5 percent of the votes. Who will these voters vote for in the runoff?
All the votes for Sinan Ogan come from nationalists and ultra-nationalists. 60 percent of the parties they voted for are the MHP and the IYI party. Therefore, it is not possible for Kilicdaroglu to win over these voters. Even if Sinan Ogan recommended Kilicdaroglu for election, they would not follow.
