The 2018 Lebanese Parliamentary Elections: What Do the Numbers Say? Mount Lebanon 1 Electoral Report District: Keserwan and Jbeil Georgia Dagher FEB 2021 Jbeil Keserwan Founded in 1989, the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies is a Beirut-based independent, non-partisan think tank whose mission is to produce and advocate policies that improve good governance in fields such as oil and gas, economic development, public finance, and decentralization. This report is published in partnership with HIVOS through the Women Empowered for Leadership (WE4L) programme, funded by the Netherlands Foreign Ministry FLOW fund. Copyright© 2021 The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies Designed by Polypod Executed by Dolly Harouny Sadat Tower, Tenth Floor P.O.B 55-215, Leon Street, Ras Beirut, Lebanon T: + 961 1 79 93 01 F: + 961 1 79 93 02 [email protected] www.lcps-lebanon.org The 2018 Lebanese Parliamentary Elections: What Do the Numbers Say? Mount Lebanon 1 Electoral District: Keserwan and Jbeil Georgia Dagher Georgia Dagher is a researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. Her research focuses on parliamentary representation, namely electoral behavior and electoral reform. She has also previously contributed to LCPS's work on international donors conferences and reform programs. She holds a degree in Politics and Quantitative Methods from the University of Edinburgh. The author would like to thank Sami Atallah, Daniel Garrote Sanchez, Ben Rejali, and Micheline Tobia for their contribution to this report 2 LCPS Report Executive Summary In the Lebanese parliamentary elections of 2018, the electoral district of Mount Lebanon 1—which combined Keserwan and Jbeil—saw a competitive race, with candidates from three electoral lists making it to parliament. Constituents were highly mobilized, as Mount Lebanon 1 was the electoral district that saw the highest turnout rate across the country. There were some variations across confessional groups, with voters who had a stake in the elections results—Maronites and Shias—having much higher participation rates. The proportional representation electoral system created high levels of competition, as the Free Patriotic Movement and its affiliated candidates, which had won all the district’s seats in the previous election, experienced a drop in support. Although the party’s list won the plurality of the votes and seats, it lost two seats to the Lebanese Forces list, and two others to a list which included independent candidates and a candidate from the Kataeb. There were variations in support for the winning lists and candidates across confessional groups: The three winning lists received nearly all of the Maronite votes in both Keserwan and Jbeil, while Shia voters voted much more for a list which included a Hezbollah candidate. Maronite voters also voted much more for the winning candidates, while an overwhelming majority of Shia voters in Jbeil cast their preferential vote for the Hezbollah candidate, with a very low number voting for the Shia winner. Six women ran for elections in Mount Lebanon 1, five of them in Keserwan and one in Jbeil, and received a very low number of votes. While the share of votes they received did not significantly vary across voters’ gender, among those who voted for a list, women voters cast their preferential vote for a woman more often than men voters did. The fourth list that ran in Mount Lebanon 1 was Kulluna Watani, the coalition between emerging political actors. It won a low number of votes, and there were only minor variations in the support it received across confessional groups and genders. In Jbeil, Kulluna Watani voters had a high confessional bias: Nearly all Maronite voters who voted for a candidate in the list chose a Maronite candidate, and nearly all Shia voters chose the Shia candidate. Finally, the results in Mount Lebanon 1 suggest potential irregularities that benefited candidates on the Free Patriotic Movement and Lebanese Forces lists—particularly in Jbeil, although there also were some irregular patterns in the votes for the latter list in Keserwan. In Jbeil, both lists received better results in some of the smallest polling stations, and in polling stations that recorded very high turnouts, which could suggest voter or vote rigging. In addition, the share of votes obtained by each of the two lists tended to decrease as the share of null votes in a polling station increased, which could also suggest vote rigging. Mount Lebanon 1 Electoral District: Keserwan and Jbeil 3 Introduction After passing a new electoral law in 2017, the Lebanese parliament finally agreed to hold elections in 2018—nine years after the previous ones, and two mandate extensions later. The new electoral law established a proportional representation system for the first time in the country’s history, paving the way for increased competition. This new system, however, led to little changes in political representation, with voters in 2018 reiterating their support for the main established political parties. Nevertheless, these results must not be taken at face value and require a closer analysis, as voting patterns across and within electoral districts, as well as across voters’ demographic characteristics, still showed variations. As part of a larger study on the 2018 elections, LCPS has analyzed voter behavior at the national and the electoral district levels. Using the official elections results from polling stations published by the Ministry of Interior,1 the analysis unpacks the elections results and 1 examines differing patterns in voting behavior across demographic Available at: http://elections.gov.lb. characteristics and geographical areas. The results at the polling station 2 Note that some polling stations had level were merged with a series of potential explanatory factors at the voters from multiple confessional groups individual and cadastral levels. First, based on the ministry’s list of registered to vote. Similarly, some had registered voters by confession and gender in each of the polling both men and women registered to vote. stations,2 we identified the demographic characteristics of registered 3 Obtained from the National Oceanic and voters in each of the polling stations. The results at the polling station Atmospheric Administration. level were also merged with a series of factors that may have affected 4 voters’ choices at the cadastral level in each electoral district. These Data on National Poverty Targeting Pro- factors include the level of economic development in a cadaster, ap- gram beneficiaries was obtained from the Ministry of Social Affairs. proximated by the night-time light intensity;3 the poverty rate in a 5 cadaster, approximated by the ratio of beneficiaries of the National Based on electoral data on the sect of 4 voters per polling station, we constructed Poverty Targeting Program over the population in the cadaster; the n an index of homogeneity (IH) = ∑i=1Sij2, 2 level of sectarian homogeneity in a cadaster, constructed by LCPS and where Sij is the sum of the square root based on the distribution of voters by confession in each cadaster;5 of the share of each sectarian group in the total number of registered voters in and, finally, the share of refugees over the number of registered voters a cadaster. The index ranges between 0 in a cadaster.6 Through the use of multivariate regression analyses, (when the cadaster is fully heteroge- neous) and 1 (when the cadaster is fully the explanatory significance of each of these factors on voter behavior homogeneous, or only one sectarian is identified. group is present). Apart from voters’ preferences, the study also examines incidents of 6 Data on the refugee population is electoral fraud. We seek to identify evidence of voter rigging, such as collected from UNHCR. vote buying, and vote rigging, such as ballot stuffing and vote counting manipulations. This report unpacks the results in the electoral district of Mount Lebanon 1, which consists of Keserwan and Jbeil and is allocated eight parliamentary seats—five Maronite seats in Keserwan, and two Maronite seats and one Shia seat in Jbeil. The report is divided into seven sections. First, we present the demographic distribution of 4 LCPS Report registered voters in Mount Lebanon 1. The second section analyzes voter turnout, which varied across confessional groups and genders. The third section of this report delves into voters’ preferences for political parties and candidates. Going beyond the results at the aggregate level, we shed light on the varying preferences for parties and candidates across voters’ sect and across geographical areas in each of the Mount Lebanon 1 districts. In the fourth section, we examine voters’ sectarian behavior in Jbeil, i.e. their preferences for candidates of their same sectarian group. The fifth section looks at the performance of women candidates. The sixth section looks at the performance of the Kulluna Watani list that ran for elections in Mount Lebanon 1. The seventh and final section of this report identifies incidents of electoral fraud. Using a number of statistical methods—which include analyzing the distribution of results at the polling station level, such as turnouts, votes for each list and party, and the share of invalid ballots—we test for voter and vote rigging, such as pressure to vote through vote buying, or manipulations in the vote counting process. I Who are the voters? In the Lebanese parliamentary elections of May 2018, over 180,000 voters were registered to vote in the electoral district of Mount 7 Lebanon 1, composed of Keserwan and Jbeil. Among the registered In Keserwan, 93,958 voters, including 7 138 public employees, were registered voters, 176,291 were registered in Lebanon and 3,912 registered from in Lebanon, and in Jbeil, 82,333, abroad.8 Out of the total 128 parliamentary seats, there were eight including 284 public employees were registered in Lebanon.