United or divided? the opposition’s dilemmas for the Senate. Effects of closed and unblocked lists on senatorial candidacies

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By Fer­nando Martínez Es­co­bar

Among the po­lit­i­cal forces that make up the re­cently cre­ated Con­cer­ta­tion, there are ba­si­cally two po­si­tions in re­la­tion to the con­for­ma­tion of the lists for the Sen­ate; one seeks to pre­sent a uni­fied list and the other to main­tain its own lists.

What should the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and forces do: should they go to­gether on a sin­gle list or should they pre­sent dif­fer­ent lists?

A pri­ori, the ef­fect of closed and un­blocked lists with pref­er­en­tial vot­ing in the 2021 mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions in Paraguay al­lowed us to ob­serve that the greater the in­ter­nal com­pe­ti­tion among the mem­bers of the same po­lit­i­cal list, the greater the num­ber of seats to which the list gains ac­cess. That is to say, the more votes each in­di­vid­ual can­di­date brings, in com­pe­ti­tion against his or her own list part­ner, the greater the chances that a greater num­ber of mem­bers of the list he or she rep­re­sents will en­ter.

In fact, in last year’s elec­tions, with the new elec­toral rules im­ple­mented for the first time, the Col­orado Party achieved the high­est per­cent­age of mu­nic­i­pal coun­cil seats in its his­tory. Table 1 shows how the ANR achieved 62% of the to­tal seats avail­able at the na­tional level, sur­pass­ing by 10 points the per­cent­age achieved in the 2015 mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions.

Table 1: NRA Coun­cilors at the coun­try level

Source: Fer­nando Martínez Es­co­bar with data from TSJE and Arditi Be­na­jamin (1992).

One hy­poth­e­sis to ex­plain the in­crease in seats for the ANR is that each per­son chooses a can­di­date from the list, but at the same time chooses the whole party or list, so the voter may not like one or sev­eral can­di­dates on the list, but since his or her can­di­date is on that list, he or she votes for his or her can­di­date and, in do­ing so, also votes, whether he or she wants to or not, for the whole list, that is, for the can­di­date or can­di­dates he or she did not want.

There­fore, para­dox­i­cally, con­tain­ing or main­tain­ing, in the same list, op­pos­ing elec­toral of­fers can be elec­torally pos­i­tive for the list. In terms of elec­toral strat­egy, in­ter­nal com­pe­ti­tion is a col­lec­tive and in­di­vid­ual need at the same time.

Col­lec­tive be­cause the seats (or num­ber of seats) are dis­trib­uted pro­por­tion­ally based on the num­ber of votes ob­tained; and in­di­vid­ual be­cause the ini­tial or­der of the list is re­ordered based on the votes of each can­di­date. In other words, each can­di­date has the in­cen­tive to dif­fer­en­ti­ate him­self or her­self from his or her run­ning mate by bring­ing dif­fer­ent pro­pos­als and fo­cus­ing his or her cam­paign on groups or niches large enough to en­able him or her to se­cure a seat.

In turn, the need for dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion causes the elec­toral sys­tem to en­cour­age the flight from the cen­ter or from spaces al­ready pop­u­lated by other can­di­da­cies and pro­motes an elec­toral po­lit­i­cal be­hav­ior that en­cour­ages can­di­da­cies to seek ter­ri­to­ries that are not well in­hab­ited or, in other words, un­der­rep­re­sented.

In this re­gard, and given the need for dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, the new elec­toral rules are also an op­por­tu­nity for de­mands that have so far failed to take root in the rep­re­sen­ta­tive and in­sti­tu­tional elec­toral field to win seats. For ex­am­ple, it is an op­por­tu­nity for can­di­dates who pro­mote laws against all forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, gen­der poli­cies or equal mar­riage to gather be­hind their can­di­da­cies a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple to gain ac­cess to na­tional seats or, on the con­trary, it is also an in­cen­tive for can­di­dates to rad­i­cal­ize their pro­pos­als, seek­ing the vote of more right-lean­ing spaces. In fact, some can­di­dates, such as En­rique Ri­era, have al­ready be­gun to di­rect their speeches to­wards these sec­tors. In this sense, Ri­era does not mind be­ing po­lit­i­cally cor­rect or re­ceiv­ing blows from sec­tors more lo­cated to­wards the po­lit­i­cal cen­ter, if he can dis­pute the lead­er­ship of sec­tors that seek more con­ser­v­a­tive mea­sures.

Now, from what has been ex­posed so far, re­gard­ing the uni­fi­ca­tion of lists for the Sen­ate and its ef­fects, the NRA does not seem to face many prob­lems and, even if we take as a back­ground the re­sults of the mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions, it is pos­si­ble to fore­see that in the Sen­ate elec­tions its num­bers could also im­prove, based on its strong in­ter­nal com­pe­ti­tion and the mul­ti­plic­ity of its pro­pos­als. On the other hand, on the other hand, the op­po­si­tion faces dilem­mas of con­tra­dic­tory elec­toral in­cen­tives when uni­fy­ing its lists for the Sen­ate. Why?

Be­cause the op­po­si­tion par­ties are in po­si­tions of strength that are of­ten di­a­met­ri­cally op­posed, and this makes their strate­gic cal­cu­la­tions also vary. It is not the same to form a uni­fied list for par­ties that al­ready have rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Sen­ate Cham­ber, as it is for par­ties that did not have rep­re­sen­ta­tion in 2018, or for move­ments that are be­ing formed in view of the 2023 elec­tions. It is not even the same for the three op­po­si­tion par­ties with the most seats in the Sen­ate: the PLRA, the Frente Guasu or Pa­tria Querida.

In the Sen­ate, the great frag­men­ta­tion of elec­toral pro­pos­als (of po­lit­i­cal par­ties or move­ments) fa­vored par­ties with par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tion (and not just the ANR or the PLRA). In the 2018 elec­tions, there were 29 lists for the Sen­ate, of which, 8 lists achieved rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Table 2 shows how 20% of the votes cast went un­rep­re­sented; of these votes, 11% voted for po­lit­i­cal forces that did not ob­tain any rep­re­sen­ta­tion. If the lists of these un­rep­re­sented par­ties had been uni­fied, they would have ob­tained 5 seats. Blank votes would have ob­tained 2 seats with 5%, null votes 1 seat with 3%. Fi­nally, UN­ACE would have been left with­out seats.

In ad­di­tion, in the 2018 elec­tions, the 20% of votes with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion did not van­ish, but con­tributed to the par­ties with rep­re­sen­ta­tion hav­ing a higher per­cent­age of seats than votes in re­la­tion to the to­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion. Thus, the ANR ob­tained 3 more seats, the PLRA 2 more seats, the Frente Guasu 1, the PDP 1 and the Hag­amos Party 1 more. In sum­mary, the 8 po­lit­i­cal forces were ben­e­fited with a per­cent­age over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion over the to­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Table 2: Per­cent­age of votes ver­sus per­cent­age of seats by party

Source: Fer­nando Martínez Es­co­bar with data from TSJE

Look­ing at the ac­tion of the po­lit­i­cal forces from this per­spec­tive, the uni­fi­ca­tion of the Sen­ate lists into a sin­gle list could very well take these el­e­ments as part of the ne­go­ti­a­tion, since, while a uni­fied op­po­si­tion list may in­crease the num­ber of Sen­ate seats for the op­po­si­tion, at the same time the larger po­lit­i­cal forces within the Con­cer­ta­tion will not want to lose the num­ber of seats al­ready ob­tained in 2018.

the new electoral rules are also an opportunity for demands that have so far failed to take root in the representative and institutional electoral field to win seats. For example, it is an opportunity for candidates who promote laws against all forms of discrimination, gender policies or equal marriage to gather behind their candidacies a significant number of people to gain access to national seats or, on the contrary, it is also an incentive for candidates to radicalize their proposals, seeking the vote of more right-leaning spaces.

In this sense, the PLRA, be­ing the sec­ond largest force in the coun­try, in gen­eral ben­e­fits in each of the elec­tions with­out the need to unify the lists, while the Frente Guasu, which also ob­tained an over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion in 2018, counts in its ranks with a su­per elec­tor such as Fer­nando Lugo (at least so far), who will there­fore re­ceive enough votes for the Frente Guasu to ac­cess a few seats. On the other hand, if the Frente Guasu goes within a uni­fied list, Lu­go’s votes will also ex­tend to other po­lit­i­cal forces that in­te­grate the list and not only the Frente Guasu.

On the other hand, other po­lit­i­cal forces (such as Pa­tria Querida) have al­ready an­nounced that they will pre­sent their own list, while Katya González (En­cuen­tro Na­cional), Soledad Núñez, the Hag­amos Party and Des­per­tar have just uni­fied their lists for Con­gress to be called “Alianza En­cuen­tro Na­cional”. This de­ci­sion is in ac­cor­dance with their re­sources of less in­sti­tu­tional po­lit­i­cal power and there­fore closer to the ap­proach of uni­fi­ca­tion of lists, ex­plained at the be­gin­ning of this ar­ti­cle.

So: United or di­vided?

Cover im­age: El Mundo.es