July 2020 Election Violence Risk Briefing
By: Matt Scott Frank
Tags: Violence, Forecasting, Democracy, Elections, Election 2020

The Dominican Republic had the greatest risk of election violence this month, although no election has a risk of election violence greater than 50%.

La barque pendant l’Indonation by Alfred Sisley

The Electoral Violence Intelligence System (ELVIS) is a machine learning driven forecasting system that estimates the risk of election-related violence for every national election every month. These posts will provide updates on the outputs of our forecasting model, give an in-depth view of what to expect in the coming month and note any technical changes/updates.

Feel free to reach out to either myself (mfrank@oneearthfuture.org) or Clayton Besaw (cbesaw@oneearthfuture.org) for any questions regarding our ELVIS platform or analyses contained in the updates.

June 2020 ELVIS Report:

Data and algorithm updates

Updated precipitation (SPI) estimates using NOAA’s May 2020 PREC/L release (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.prel.html).

Added final election outcome codings for the following countries: Ireland

Changed Macedonia to North Macedonia

Added previously missing election events for the following countries: Russia, Croatia, North Macedonia

Corrected election date for upcoming election event in Montenegro

Made coding/typo/date corrections for election events in the following countries: Barbados, Malaysia, Denmark, Myanmar, Namibia, Palau, Tajikistan, Togo, Dominican Republic. (Credit and thanks to Jonas Vesbty for identifying these miscodings)

Risk Forecast for June 2020

The Dominican Republic had a risk of election violence just shy of 50% for their presidential elections this past Sunday, which saw the unseating of the center-left Dominican Liberation Party after a 16-year rule.

The election featured a so-far isolated incident of violence in which an opposition leader was shot to death outside of a polling station in Santo Domingo.

On the same day, Croatia held early parliamentary elections which saw the incumbent center-right party gain a plurality of seats, upending expectations of a large opposition win. In line with ELVIS’ projections, there were no reported instances of election violence.

Finally, Russia held a referendum to extend president Vladimir Putin’s rule until 2036. The referendum passed, although the election appeared to feature an extensive amount of vote rigging.

Poland will be holding the second round of their presidential election on July 12, while North Macedonia will hold parliamentary elections three days later on July 15.

One notable addition the our list of most at-risk elections for the remainder of 2020 is Bolivia, which has a roughly 58% estimated probability of ERV. Cases of Covid-19 are expected to peak around September, while repression against the party of ousted president Evo Morales continues.

Indeed, an anti-corruption commission recently accused Morales of terrorism and financing terrorism and sought his preventative detention (Morales is currently residing in Argentina).

The charges center on two phone calls Morales made during unrest this past November following his ouster in which he is alleged to have helped coordinate blockades around a number of Bolivian cities.