IZMIR, Turkey — With less than 72 hours to go until Turkey's high-stakes elections this Sunday, several polls have placed opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu on the brink of a win in the first round — with less than a point short of a majority.
A last-minute withdrawal on Thursday by Muharrem Ince, a presidential contender whom pundits criticized for dividing the opposition’s vote, may have boosted Kilicdaroglu's chances of defeating incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the first round on May 14.
A poll from KONDA, which made accurate predictions in the 2014 and 2018 elections, placed Kilicdaroglu — whom many considered the least likely candidate among the opposition to defeat Erdogan — at 49.6% and Erdogan at 43.7%, while the two other candidates, nationalist Sinan Ogan and Ince, got 4.8% and 2.2%, respectively. Ozer Sencar of MetroPOLL also reported similar findings, with Kilicdaroglu at 49.1% and Erdogan at around 47%. All these calculations on Turkey’s dual polls for a president and parliament were made before Ince’s withdrawal.
“Ince’s withdrawal may be the critical factor that would lead to the opposition’s win in the first round,” Seren Selvin Korkmaz, executive director of Istanbul-based think tank IstanPol Institute, said on Halk TV minutes after Ince’s withdrawal. Ince, a 55-year-old physics teacher, was endorsed as Kilicdaroglu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate against Erdogan in 2018. However, after his disappearing act following defeat in the first round, he left the CHP to establish his own party.
