Local Election Results
Quick Hit: November 7, 2023
Welcome back to Moldova Matters. In this Quick Hit article we’re going to look at the results of the local elections held on November 5th, the spin being employed by the various parties and some preliminary analysis. We’ll be back later this week with a full Weekly Roundup.
Note: If you want to explore the election results district by district they are posted on the CEC website with a helpful graphical interface.
Chisinau Mayoral Election
The biggest prize in the November 5th local elections in Moldova was for control over the city of Chisinau. Polls had showed incumbent Mayor Ion Ceban with a commanding lead before the election, but there was a question of whether PAS candidate Lilan Carp could force a second round by denying Ceban an outright victory of more than 50%. In the event, the answer was no. Mayor Ceban won in the first round with 50.62% of the vote while Carp trailed him at 28.23%. Other candidates were substantially behind the 2 frontrunners.
Mayor Ceban’s MAN Party also took the lead in elections to the municipal council winning a plurality of 33.1% of the vote, followed closely by PAS with 32.88%. In the distribution of seats PAS and MAN are tied with 20 councilors each, followed by the Socialists with 6 seats, Communists with 2 and 1 each for Renaissance (Shor), DA and Our Party (Usati).
In his statements following victory Mayor Ceban said "I want to assure you that I will be the mayor of everyone, absolutely everyone."
Raion (District) Council Elections
The next most watched indicator from the elections was the outcome of Raion council elections across the country. These elections are conducted via party lists with voters selecting the party of their choice - in effect representing a popular vote indicator by party. In these elections PAS came in first winning a plurality in 19 districts (yellow on the map below) but not securing a majority in any. The Socialists solidly carried the North of the country and took a plurality in 5 districts and an outright majority in 4. Shor’s Renaissance Party took the plurality in Taraclia and smaller parties had victories in 4 other districts.
Other Mayoral Races
Of the 898 mayoral races 265 will move to second round elections with no candidate having secured more than 50% in the first round. Eight additional mayoral races will have re-run elections because elections did not meet the 25% minimum threshold in those localities. In Balti, Moldova’s 2nd largest city, the election was nearly tied between Alexander Petkov of Our Party (Usati) at 22.69% and Arina Korshikova (Independent / Shor) at 21.52%. The election will move to a runoff.
Shor’s chosen candidate won in Orhei with 57.59% with the PAS candidate coming in 2nd at 17%. Shor’s “independent” candidate in Taraclia also won with almost 90% of the vote.
Overall, PAS won 244 mayoral races in the first round and will proceed to the 2nd round in 153 more. This is the best individual showing for a Party, but it is notable that of the 13 municipalities in Moldova PAS won none of them. Seven municipalities elected mayors in the first round and of the 4 going to the 2nd round PAS is only competing in 1 race.
The Socialists also had a strong showing with more than 100 mayoral victories in the first round and 80 moving to the 2nd round.
Incidents and Irregularities
During the election, and in the period of counting the votes, the Central Elections Commission CEC suffered a major cyberattack. Explaining the situation the CEC stated:
“On election day, namely after the closing of polling stations, incidents in the field of cybersecurity and several attempts were recorded to disable the IT infrastructure of the CEC. This caused external information updating to slow down for short periods of time while preliminary results were being displayed. Specialists from the technology and cybersecurity service promptly responded to all identified threats, managed to block these attacks in a timely manner and ensure the uninterrupted operation of the information system,”
The impact of the attack was minimal, but interruptions where people couldn’t view the CEC website, occurred for around an hour while the vote was counted. By all indications cybersecurity authorities responded quickly and little public impact was felt.
Election observers from PromoLex, Moldova’s premier election monitoring NGO, recorded more than two times the number of violations during this election than in the previous 2019 vote. Among the recorded issues, the most common were group voting (more than 1 person entering the voting booth - 128 cases), photographing ballots or other violations of secrecy (128 cases) and errors in the electoral lists (incorrect registrations, addresses, etc - 88 cases).
Note: Photographing ballots is illegal. It is traditionally used as a way to report who you voted for to someone who paid you a bribe, or who promised you a bribe.
Representatives of the EU’s election monitoring mission from the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations ENEMO echoed this analysis saying:
“voting on election day was generally correct, with some violations, which, however, did not affect the legitimacy of the process.”
ENEMO representatives expressed more concerns about events leading up to the elections citing administrative resources used by candidates, voter bribery and the last minute expelling of the Chance party. The mission overall expressed cautious support for the elections process. European Parliament representatives echoed this praising a “transparent vote” but also stressing that national security precedents in expelling candidates should not become a precedent. They also noted that they are not in a position to judge this particular instance.
Spin and Analysis
As one might expect with a mixed result, pretty much everyone declared victory. PAS called the vote a victory for Moldova’s European path with the Prime Minister stating:
“In the local elections we saw strong support for the European course, because people want to build Europe at home, they want to live at home, like in Europe.
Minister Spinu echoed this stating that "the pro-European message won overwhelmingly throughout the country."
Regarding the election in Chisinau, Lilian Carp and PAS representatives stated that they respected the will of the people and will need to try harder in the future. Speaker Grosu also noted that PAS will monitor the work of the “pro-Kremlin mayor.”
Igor Dodon also stated that the Socialists had “good results” and called the vote a “crushing defeat” for PAS.
Only Shor hasn’t been out loudly declaring victory. This is partly because the various Shor parties and independent candidates are not technically (or legally) working together. So its a little harder to get a picture of how widespread his victories were. One thing Shor did show was a rapid ability to pivot candidates once Chance was removed. Major victories in Orhei and Taraclia, and going to the 2nd round in Balti, were both only possible by shifting support to secondary candidates in a 24 hour period. This highlights the major challenges of his diffuse strategy as well as the persistence of Shor’s popularity in some regions.
Expert Andrei Curararu summed up the results as follows:
“This is a traditional situation when everyone considers themselves winners: MAN thinks that they showed themselves well in Chisinau; the socialists confirmed that they are still relevant in some areas - and for them this is very important; PAS won in most areas, but it is a shaky majority that could easily be broken by coalitions of pro-Kremlin parties.”
In a preliminary analysis, these are the main outcomes. Everyone had something to show but also setbacks. We could sum it up as follows:
Mayor Ceban’s MAN party won a strong victory in Chisinau. But with only a plurality of vote in the city council the party will have to either cooperate with PAS or cooperate with the pro-Russian faction (putting the lie to their supposedly pro-EU stance).
PAS won the most Raion councils but without majorities. Given the dispersion of Shor backed forces and the presence of other pro-Russian parties that will result in trouble for them governing anywhere. The party showed strong showings in mayoral elections, but without victories in any municipalities.
The Socialists kept the North red. This has proved their continued relevance and somewhat checked the narrative of their demise, at least for now.
Shor maintained power in Orhei and Taraclia and has a shot at the mayoral election in Balti. But the removal of Chance and the dispersion of his candidates denied him a neat way of claiming widespread victory outside of these races.
Put simply, everyone has a “we did good, but…” outcome here. PAS in particular will now know that they have a lot of work to do before national elections.
We’ll continue coverage of the results as narratives form and more reporting is done on the conduct of the elections in the next Weekly Roundup.