By Eduard Zaloshnja
After the coalition between Rama and Meta won the 2013 elections with 1 million votes in favor, Edi Rama introduced the metaphor “1 million slaps against the DP government”. And this metaphor became like a “tune” that he repeated in almost every parliamentary session in the years to come.
A month before Sunday’s elections, the coalition of “1 million slaps” was split and three parties of that coalition consisting of 34 parties, managed to secure seats for the new Parliament–SP, SMI and SDP.
But did they manage to obtain 1 million votes in these elections, in spite of racing on their own?
Although the Central Election Commission has not yet announced the official result for Sunday’s elections, preliminary results indicate that the Socialist Party has obtained around 780 thousand votes on a national level, SMI has obtained around 225 thousand votes and the Social Democratic Party has obtained around 10 thousand votes (other small parties of the former coalition of “1 million slaps” have obtained around 5 thousand votes).
If we add up these votes (although left wing parties raced on their own), we arrive at the figure 1 million and 20 thousand votes. So, “1 million slaps” were repeated, only this time, they were delivered by several separate hands…
A question naturally arises: “Why did the DP and the parties that raced under its logo on Sunday receive 10 seats less than four years ago, while the parties in front of them obtained the same number of votes that they obtained in the previous parliamentary elections? (I shall leave PJIU out of this question, as a party which has been positioned between the left and the right wing of Albanian politics).
The answer is simple–the turnout of right wing voters fell dramatically, while several thousands of them voted for parties outside the right wing. So, out of 660 thousand who voted for the DP four years ago and the parties that raced on Sunday under its logo, only 470 thousand voted for it on Sunday (see the chart).
In other words, for each 10 voters of the DP+etc of 2013, only 7 voted in favor of it on Sunday. And we can say that this is a dramatic fall. The reasons for this fall may be many, but they would need a long analysis, which needs to be made e as the days go by, by the Democratic Party and political analysts.
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