How Colombo Votes (2000-2011)
I’ve been going thru the election results for the recent local government elections. While the UNP got the most votes, they’ve lost their majority in Colombo and their presence here is on a steady decline. Note that they’ve already lost the suburbs (Kotte, Dehiwela) and, of course, the rest of the country. They’re also losing minority votes in Colombo, and in the North and East, which have their own parties.
I voted SLFP in the last election, but I’m not an SLFPer. I’ve always identified with the UNP more, but they’re not really the UNP anymore. As you can see, after Ranil lost the Presidential in 2005, the party has gone into steady decline. They’ve bled people and ideas, such that they essentially ran on trishaws and keeping things the same.
The Decreasing Gap
Above I’ve included available data from all the major elections this century. That’s weird to say. At one point, it was basically impossible for the UNP to lost Colombo. The gap in the 2001 Parliamentary election was 130,000 votes. In the 2010 Parliamentary it was less than 60,000 and in the 2011 Local it was less than 25,000. This is part of a steady decline.
From 2010 to 2011 (different elections, same electorate) the UNP is down 37% in Colombo West, 34% in Colombo North and 23% overall. Only in Borella did they even maintain.
Seeing the gap between these two parties close doesn’t give me any pride. It’s not like SLFP policies suddenly got better. The UNP has just been losing votes and the SLFP has been running candidates that crossed over. It’s just completely self-inflicted pain.
By Electorate
As you can see, after Ranil lost the Presidential in 2005, he should have stepped down. That would have given the party a chance to rebuild itself. Instead, he’s just been slowly bleeding it to death. This has two components, one, voters lose heart and stop voting. Two, the people they voted for have crossed over to the government. As another wildcard, Ranil has also simply sat out or messed up multiple elections – the UNP elephant was not even on the ballot in the last Presidential race or the penultimate mayoral.
Hence, all of these UPFA gains are basically from UNP losses, not from any net value addition or even special effort on their part. Support everywhere is declining, especially in the huge Colombo Central area.
It is also important to note, that this is literally all the UNP has left. The suburbs are gone, the north and east are gone and the south is completely vamoose. My preference in this recent election was Milinda Moragoda (formerly UNP, now UPFA) and Mano Ganeshan (formerly UNF/UNP and now with his own party). Indeed, those two together formed a majority of votes cast.
Thus, I wouldn’t say this is a good election for the UNP, though they won. What’s more telling is how much they’ve lost, and will continue to lose, until they select a new leader.
This data is all in a public Google Doc. Feel free. Most of the data is from Wikipedia, or the Department of Elections.
Posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 in Colombo, election, Politics, Statistics.
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While agreeing that P. Ranil should step down, can you find another thick skined politician like him? Doesn’t his thick skin and ability to survive any adversity like the proverbial cat with nine lives make him truly a great politician according to our standards? With regard to political cunning and deviousness he doesn’t have a equal. Sadly with regard to lack of leadership he doesn’t have a equal there either…….
Well Ranil’s cunningness now lies in the fact that he remains good pals with the President and gets what he wants from the government, in return for holding on as the UNP leader and thus stopping the UNP from being any credible opposition against the government. But I agree that he is pretty thick skinned. And that he is a horrible leader.
I can’t help wondering if the country (or at least Colombo) is better off this way. If there were a proper opposition then a lot of the development going on in the country, even the non-’white elephant’ things, would be delayed and vetoed due to the political process. Right now pretty much anything by the government can flow through quite easily and get done fast. This includes good things too, so perhaps on the whole this is a good situation for us to be in.
Of course the green-blooded people will disagree, as always. But I think a lot of people have interpreted the current situation as “good”. After all, people mostly look for personal benefit rather than others’ benefit. As such, an opposition leader being put in prison is less likely to upset the regular Colombo resident if the road they travel on daily has been renovated and expanded, and their city is looking nicer and more open.
I believe the focus now should be on trying to make the existing government less corrupt, rather than trying to overthrow it and start a new government (which would mean everything from development to education begin “reogranized” and loads of time and money being wasted).
Good analysis. I think a there were a lot of UNP voters who simply did not bother getting out to vote, which is why I was surprised when they won.