The result of Türkiye’s presidential vote bore no resemblance to pollsters’ forecasts which pointed to the opposition candidate in the lead, compounding the surprise for markets and voters alike when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emerged ahead in the race.
With a runoff set for May 28 between Erdoğan and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the forecasts are being disregarded and pollsters are reflecting on where their surveys went wrong ahead of a vote seen as one of the most important in Turkish history.
Opinion polls from numerous companies had for weeks shown Kılıçdaroğlu in front of Erdoğan, appearing to chime with perceptions that his popularity had been sapped by soaring inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.
Yet Sunday’s results were the other way round, with Erdoğan winning 49.5% of the vote and Kılıçdaroğlu on 44.96%, with 99% of the ballot boxes counted. Neither candidate has secured more than 50%, so the vote goes to a runoff.
One polling company, MAK, in a survey published on May 7, showed Kılıçdaroğlu winning 50.9% in the presidential election, enough to secure a win in the first round.
MAK Chairperson Mehmet Ali Kulat said conducting surveys had been more complicated by factors including the massive earthquakes that struck Türkiye in February, and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ran from March to April.
“There was a 20-day period after Ramadan and you cannot legally conduct polls in the last ten days. These made us stray further. But, as research companies, we should not find excuses,” he told Reuters.
Erdoğan’s People’s Alliance, comprising his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and its nationalist partners, also appeared set to win a majority in the new Parliament with 321 of the 600 seats, an outcome seen as boosting his chances in the presidential runoff.
While some pollsters, including MAK, had predicted a majority for the People’s Alliance in the parliamentary vote, the nationalist MHP – part of the governing alliance – did much better than forecast.
Meanwhile, before the elections, Erdoğan had said that all surveys conducted using proper techniques indicated that they were ahead, noting that “it is not possible to win an election with desk polls and social media campaigns.”
MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli also slammed pollsters for manipulating surveys, which claimed that his party’s votes had nosedived.
MHP won 10% of the parliamentary elections and will send 50 lawmakers to the Turkish Parliament.
Erik Meyersson, chief emerging markets strategist at SEB, said opinion polling in Türkiye, as in many other countries, can often be misleading, including people not being honest about who they would vote for.
“Different polls with different biases and issues create noisy averages that remain unrepresentative of voting intentions,” he said.
“Voters may have engaged in signaling, to the extent that they indicated their displeasure with the government’s policies by upping the opposition in opinion polls but consequently supported the incumbent in the elections.”
