Chief Wiggum, regular reader and valued commenter on ComingAnarchy, has forwarded me a most interesting article on Hamas’ recent win in Palestine which gets into Palestinian election law and the reality of what happened. Much ink has already been spilled over the issue but the article is well worth one’s attention as it puts the election in an entirely different light. And lastly a reminder to readers, don’t hesitate to contact us with articles like this or suggestions for future articles!
A close look at the final results of last month’s Palestinian election shows that the apparent landslide that gave Hamas 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council and only 45 to the once-dominant Fatah movement was, in the words of one analyst, “an optical illusion.”
Under a new system introduced by the Fatah-dominated council last year, the election was divided into two parts. Sixty-six seats were elected according to national lists of candidates, with seats apportioned according to the percentage of votes received by each party. The remaining 66 were allocated among 16 different districts, where voters cast a separate ballot for individuals to represent each district.
[...] “In reality, a clear majority of Palestinians voted against the Hamas,” said Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. “What happened is that Hamas presented a unified list in each district, while Fatah and others had a multiplicity of candidates, which caused great divisions.”
What the article says basically then is that Hamas didn’t win, it was just that Fatah (being so divided) lost. :)
To me it looks rather a case where a party was able to win an election due to its high disclipline, even though, it lost the majority vote. I think the majority vote went around 55-45 to Fatah, while the seats went 55-45 to Hamas… (numbers from Thomas Friedman op-ed from NYTimes) Happened in 2000 presidential elections in the US too..
Chief Wiggum and Chriol – excellent pointer!
Thanks!
The basic point about the skewing of the vote I agree with, but the quote that “a clear majority of Palestinians voted against the Hamas” takes the point too far. True, Hamas disproportionately dominated the district seats based on the vote totals, but they had a plurality of the vote on both the national and the district lists. Specifically, they beat Fatah 45-42% in the national, proportional vote, and 41-36% in the districts. Three factors make it likely that the pro-terrorist vote was more than 50%; (1) the terrorist PFLP got three seats while the non-terrorist Third Way Party only got two, and (2) there were a few “independents,” and those are usually Hamas members running independent for “security reasons”; and (3) one of Fatah’s lists was headed by Marwan Barghouti, a convicted terrorist. It wasn’t a Hamas landslide, but they either had an absolute majority of the vote (counting sympathetic independents), or they were pretty close.
I have an in-depth look at the elections at my post, The Triumph of Hamas and the Future of Palestine. Although my blog is an absolutely infallible guide to all things Middle Eastern, some may want to reference somewhat better known sources, so check these out (the second source is an careful study of the vote):
Bloomberg
Fair Vote.org study of Palestinian elections
According to this vote study, it also looks like there were only two districts in which Fatah lost a seat because it split the vote, so that doesn’t seem to have been a crucial factor.
That second link didn’t work right, let me try that again:
FairVote.org
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