Predicting the outcome of national elections can be a mug’s game. Polls are often wrong, and second-guessing how people will vote months down the line can leave even the most savvy election specialist with egg on their face.
In short, there are too many unknowns – the state of the economy, late political shocks and even the weather on election day. What is known is that 2023 has its fair share on consequential races. Democracy is on the ballot in a number of nations, while common themes – such as the handling of inflation and corruption – may determine how incumbent governments and presidents fare as the ballot box. The Conversation asked five experts to provide the lowdown on what is at stake in key national votes in 2023.
Here are their psephological pearls of wisdom:
Nigeria (Feb. 25)
Carl LeVan, professor of comparative and regional studies at American University
Some of the campaign dynamics heading into the Nigerian presidential election will seem familiar to those who follow the country, with politics still deeply entwined with the country’s geographic-religious divide between a predominantly Muslim north and its Christian south. And after eight years of a northerner – Muhammadu Buhari – holding the presidency, debate revolves around whether power should “shift” to the south.
Buhari, in line with the constitution, is stepping down after serving two four-year terms – and that changes the electoral landscape. For only the second time since the transition to civilian rule in 1999, there’s no incumbent presidential candidate.
Having no incumbent seeking reelection has historically increased the chances of opposition party victory in Africa. Arguably for the first time since the 1980s, each of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria has produced a serious presidential contender: Atiku Abubakar who is of Hausa-Fulani descent, the Yoruba former Lagos governor Bola Tinubu and former Anambra governor Peter Obi, a member of the Igbo.
While this might seem like progress – and has advanced inter-ethnic cooperation in the presidential campaign – it also dramatically increases the risk of no clear winner under the constitution’s formula that requires both a plurality of votes and a geographical distribution of support. A runoff has never before taken place, and the electoral commission would have only a week to organize it.
This raises the specter of electoral violence and voter intimidation in the run-up to the Feb. 23 vote. Political violence, both between and within political parties, increased in 2022. Despite this, candidates have been largely running on hopeful messages about economic diversification, anti-corruption and opportunities for Nigeria’s youth.
Turkey (June 18)
Ahmet Kuru, professor of political science at San Diego State University
People in Turkey tend to call every presidential election historic – but the June 2023 election will truly be historic. It will determine whether the increasingly autocratic rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will continue to dominate the country’s politics or not. What’s at stake is not simply “politics” in the narrow sense of the term, but also the direction in economic policy, religion, education and many other fields.
If Erdogan wins, it could portend a further erosion of the remaining opposition in Turkish public life, especially given his past record of authoritarianism and vengefulness. Indeed, there is already a suspicion that potential presidential candidates are being targeted, with the popular mayor of Istanbul being sentenced to prison in December – a conviction that if held up on appeal would bar him from running for any political office.
The danger is the Turkish opposition will lose hope for the future. It could also exacerbate the country’s “brain drain” problem – as well-educated people, including medical doctors, academics, and businesspeople, migrate to Western countries, weakening the opposition at home.
An Erdogan loss would be hugely consequential. Those who have been silenced under his rule will be able to speak up again. Over a hundred thousand people have been jailed as part of Erdogan’s political purge. It would not surprise me that in the event of an Erdogan loss, legal action is taken against him and his civil servants over alleged abuses and against his crony-capitalists over alleged corruption.
The outcome of the election will also determine the future of religion-state relations. Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, which controls 80,000 mosques, is a major ally of Erdogan. Any change in the administration is likely to result in curtailing of the directorate’s powers.
The 2023 presidential election will be fought over politics, economics and religion. If Erdogan wins, he will frame himself as the second founder of Turkey, after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. If he loses, his political, business, and religious allies will face the risk of being expunged.
Zimbabwe (likely July-August)
Miles Tendi, associate professor of politics at the University of Oxford
The 2023 election in Zimbabwe will be the second national vote to take place after the downfall of the country’s former leader Robert Mugabe.
The country’s last election, in 2018, occurred a year after a military coup ended Robert Mugabe’s oppresive 37-year-long leadership. But contrary to the hopes of many Zimbabweans and foreign governments, that ballot did not prove to be a momentous break from the country’s extensive history of disputed and violent elections – underlining that powerful systemic problems, such as the conflation of the ruling ZANU PF party and the state, generate flawed elections in Zimbabwe.
Whether Zimbabwe can finally stage an election that is universally accepted as credible is one of the key issues in 2023. A credible election in itself will not bring about consequential political, economic and social reforms. But Western states and international donors such as the International Monetary Fund will be looking for an unblemished national vote as a prerequisite to earnest economic and diplomatic re-engagement with Zimbabwe after years of strained relations.
If the ruling ZANU PF party pulls off the overwhelming election victory it is working towards, it is likely that the opposition will be further saddled with division and disillusionment, posing an existential threat to the kind of vibrant opposition politics led by the MDC in the past two decades. And with no strong opposition to challenge and keep a check on ZANU PF, the danger is authoritarian rule will be solidified.
Argentina (October 29)
Eduardo Gamarra, professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University
Not all of these problems are the sole making of President Alberto Fernández and his powerful vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – both from the center-left Peronist faction. In fact, former President Mauricio Macri racked up massive levels of debt to the IMF before being voted out in 2019. But it is fair to say that Fernández and Fernández de Kirchner have been unable to solve the country’s economic problems.
Moreover, the pair have been plagued by other problems, notably corruption – both old-style political patronage and modern corruption based in drug trafficking throughout the country.
Indeed on Dec. 6, 2022, Fernández de Kirchner was sentenced to six years in jail in a scandal over a kickback scheme that saw public contracts go to a friend in return for bribes.
Some are even predicting that the combination of mishandling the economy and the corruption scandal could bring an end to Peronism, the political philosophy that has governed Argentina for much of last 70 years. Indeed the Peronists appear to be struggling with unifying around a candidate to contest the election.
Meanwhile, the party of Mauricio Macri is similarly split, with the former president facing strong challenges from within his own party.
A big question is when the elections will take place. In Pakistan, general elections are not held under an incumbent government. Instead, an interim government – typically made up of technocrats – takes over with an election having to take place within 90 days.
But with the ruling coalition seemingly intent on holding on to power for as long as possible while the country faces an economic crisis, environmental disaster and a credibility crisis it is unclear when the national assembly will dissolve and an interim government take over. And that could mean pushing the election toward the end of the year.
Khan has said he wants a two-third majority to bring about the constitutional changes he would like. So if he fails to get that, will he still be satisfied?
Either way, the 2023 election is unlikely to be the answer to Pakistan’s woes. Whoever is in charge after will need to paper over the economic cracks with the help of the International Monetary Fund; without a further bailout, Pakistan won’t have the liquidity it needs to function.
That said, the hope is the nation’s security forces can keep a lid on violence during the election.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With President Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan set to extend more student loan relief to borrowers this summer, the federal government is pretending it can wave a magic wand to make debts disappear. But the truth of student debt “relief” is that they’re simply shifting the burden to everyone else, robbing Peter to pay Paul and funneling more steam into an inflation pressure cooker that’s already set to burst.
Starting July 1st, new rules go into effect that change the discretionary income requirements for their payment plans from 10% to only 5% for undergraduates, leading to lower payments for millions. Some borrowers will even have their owed balances revert to zero.
What the plan doesn’t describe, predictably, is how that burden will be shifted to the rest of the country by stealing value out of their pockets via new taxes or increased inflation, which still simmering well above levels seen in early 2020 before the Fed printed trillions in Covid “stimulus” money. They’re rewarding students who took out loans they can’t afford and punishing those who paid their way or repaid their loans, attending school while living within their means. And they’re stealing from the entire country to finance it.
Biden actually claims that a continuing Covid “emergency” is what gives him the authority to offer student loan forgiveness to begin with. As with any “temporary” measure that gives state power a pretense to grow, or gives them an excuse to collect more revenue (I’m looking at you, federal income tax), COVID-19 continues to be the gift that keeps on giving for power and revenue-hungry politicians even as the CDC reclassifies the virus as a threat similar to the seasonal flu.
The SAVE plan takes the burden of billions of dollars in owed payments away from students and adds it to a national debt that’s already ballooning to the tune of a mind-boggling trillion dollars every 3 months. If all student loan debt were forgiven, according to the Brookings Institution, it would surpass the cumulative totals for the past 20 years for multiple existing tax credits and welfare programs:
“Forgiving all student debt would be a transfer larger than the amounts the nation has spent over the past 20 years on unemployment insurance, larger than the amount it has spent on the Earned Income Tax Credit, and larger than the amount it has spent on food stamps.”
Ironically enough, adding hundreds of billions to the national debt from Biden’s program is likely to cause the most pain to the very demographics the Biden administration claims to be helping with its plan: poor people, anyone who skipped college entirely or paid their loans back, and other already overly-indebted young adults, whose purchasing power is being rapidly eroded by out-of-control government spending and central bank monetary shenanigans. It effectively transfers even more wealth from the poor to the wealthy, a trend that Covid-era measures have taken to new extremes.
As Ron Paul pointed out in a recent op-ed for the Eurasia Review:
“…these loans will be paid off in part by taxpayers who did not go to college, paid their own way through school, or have already paid off their student loans. Since those with college degrees tend to earn more over time than those without them, this program redistributes wealth from lower to higher income Americans.”
Even some progressives are taking aim at the plan, not because it shifts the debt burden to other Americans, but because it will require cutting welfare or sacrificing other expensive social programs promised by Biden such as universal pre-K. For these critics, the issue isn’t so much that spending and debt are totally out of control, but that they’re being funneled into the wrong issues.
Progressive “solutions” always seem to take the form of slogans like “tax the wealthy,” a feel-good bromide that for lawmakers always seems to translate into increased taxes for the middle and lower-upper class. Meanwhile, the .01% continue to avoid taxes through offshore accounts, money laundering trickery dressed up as philanthropy, and general de facto ownership of the system through channels like political donations and aggressive lobbying.
If new waves of college applicants expect loan forgiveness plans to continue, it also encourages schools to continue raising tuition and motivates prospective students to continue with even more irresponsible borrowing.
This puts pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates lower to help accommodate waves of new student loan applicants from sparkly-eyed young borrowers who figure they’ll never really have to pay the money back.
With the Fed already expected to cut rates this year despite inflation not being properly under control, the loan forgiveness scheme is just one of many factors conspiring to cause inflation to start running hotter again, spiraling out of control, as the entire country is forced to pay the hidden tax of price increases for all their basic needs.
It was Jan. 11, 2024 when software giant Microsoft (MSFT) briefly passed Apple (AAPL) as the most valuable company in the world.
Microsoft's stock closed 0.5% higher, giving it a market valuation of $2.859 trillion.
It rose as much as 2% during the session and the company was briefly worth $2.903 trillion. Apple closed 0.3% lower, giving the company a market capitalization of $2.886 trillion.
"It was inevitable that Microsoft would overtake Apple since Microsoft is growing faster and has more to benefit from the generative AI revolution," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said at the time, according to Reuters.
The two tech titans have jostled for top spot over the years and Microsoft was ahead at last check, with a market cap of $3.085 trillion, compared with Apple's value of $2.684 trillion.
Analysts noted that Apple had been dealing with weakening demand, including for the iPhone, the company’s main source of revenue.
Demand in China, a major market, has slumped as the country's economy makes a slow recovery from the pandemic and competition from Huawei.
Sales in China of Apple's iPhone fell by 24% in the first six weeks of 2024 compared with a year earlier, according to research firm Counterpoint, as the company contended with stiff competition from a resurgent Huawei "while getting squeezed in the middle on aggressive pricing from the likes of OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi," said senior Analyst Mengmeng Zhang.
“Although the iPhone 15 is a great device, it has no significant upgrades from the previous version, so consumers feel fine holding on to the older-generation iPhones for now," he said.
Big plans for China
Counterpoint said that the first six weeks of 2023 saw abnormally high numbers with significant unit sales being deferred from December 2022 due to production issues.
Apple is planning to open its eighth store in Shanghai – and its 47th across China – on March 21.
The company also plans to expand its research centre in Shanghai to support all of its product lines and open a new lab in southern tech hub Shenzhen later this year, according to the South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, over in Europe, Apple announced changes to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which went into effect last week, Reuters reported on March 12.
Beginning this spring, software developers operating in Europe will be able to distribute apps to EU customers directly from their own websites instead of through the App Store.
"To reflect the DMA’s changes, users in the EU can install apps from alternative app marketplaces in iOS 17.4 and later," Apple said on its website, referring to the software platform that runs iPhones and iPads.
"Users will be able to download an alternative marketplace app from the marketplace developer’s website," the company said.
Apple has also said it will appeal a $2 billion EU antitrust fine for thwarting competition from Spotify (SPOT) and other music streaming rivals via restrictions on the App Store.
The company's shares have suffered amid all this upheaval, but some analysts still see good things in Apple's future.
Bank of America Securities confirmed its positive stance on Apple, maintaining a buy rating with a steady price target of $225, according to Investing.com.
The firm's analysis highlighted Apple's pricing strategy evolution since the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007, with initial prices set at $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model.
BofA said that Apple has consistently launched new iPhone models, including the Pro/Pro Max versions, to target the premium market.
Analyst says Apple selloff 'overdone'
Concurrently, prices for previous models are typically reduced by about $100 with each new release.
This strategy, coupled with installment plans from Apple and carriers, has contributed to the iPhone's installed base reaching a record 1.2 billion in 2023, the firm said.
Apple has effectively shifted its sales mix toward higher-value units despite experiencing slower unit sales, BofA said.
This trend is expected to persist and could help mitigate potential unit sales weaknesses, particularly in China.
BofA also noted Apple's dominance in the high-end market, maintaining a market share of over 90% in the $1,000 and above price band for the past three years.
The firm also cited the anticipation of a multi-year iPhone cycle propelled by next-generation AI technology, robust services growth, and the potential for margin expansion.
On Monday, Evercore ISI analysts said they believed that the sell-off in the iPhone maker’s shares may be “overdone.”
The firm said that investors' growing preference for AI-focused stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) has led to a reallocation of funds away from Apple.
In addition, Evercore said concerns over weakening demand in China, where Apple may be losing market share in the smartphone segment, have affected investor sentiment.
And then ongoing regulatory issues continue to have an impact on investor confidence in the world's second-biggest company.
“We think the sell-off is rather overdone, while we suspect there is strong valuation support at current levels to down 10%, there are three distinct drivers that could unlock upside on the stock from here – a) Cap allocation, b) AI inferencing, and c) Risk-off/defensive shift," the firm said in a research note.
Major typhoid fever surveillance study in sub-Saharan Africa indicates need for the introduction of typhoid conjugate vaccines in endemic countries
There is a high burden of typhoid fever in sub-Saharan African countries, according to a new study published today in The Lancet Global Health. This high…
There is a high burden of typhoid fever in sub-Saharan African countries, according to a new study published today in The Lancet Global Health. This high burden combined with the threat of typhoid strains resistant to antibiotic treatment calls for stronger prevention strategies, including the use and implementation of typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs) in endemic settings along with improvements in access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Credit: IVI
There is a high burden of typhoid fever in sub-Saharan African countries, according to a new study published today in The Lancet Global Health. This high burden combined with the threat of typhoid strains resistant to antibiotic treatment calls for stronger prevention strategies, including the use and implementation of typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs) in endemic settings along with improvements in access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.
The findings from this 4-year study, the Severe Typhoid in Africa (SETA) program, offers new typhoid fever burden estimates from six countries: Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, and Nigeria, with four countries recording more than 100 cases for every 100,000 person-years of observation, which is considered a high burden. The highest incidence of typhoid was found in DRC with 315 cases per 100,000 people while children between 2-14 years of age were shown to be at highest risk across all 25 study sites.
There are an estimated 12.5 to 16.3 million cases of typhoid every year with 140,000 deaths. However, with generic symptoms such as fever, fatigue, and abdominal pain, and the need for blood culture sampling to make a definitive diagnosis, it is difficult for governments to capture the true burden of typhoid in their countries.
“Our goal through SETA was to address these gaps in typhoid disease burden data,” said lead author Dr. Florian Marks, Deputy Director General of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI). “Our estimates indicate that introduction of TCV in endemic settings would go to lengths in protecting communities, especially school-aged children, against this potentially deadly—but preventable—disease.”
In addition to disease incidence, this study also showed that the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Salmonella Typhi, the bacteria that causes typhoid fever, has led to more reliance beyond the traditional first line of antibiotic treatment. If left untreated, severe cases of the disease can lead to intestinal perforation and even death. This suggests that prevention through vaccination may play a critical role in not only protecting against typhoid fever but reducing the spread of drug-resistant strains of the bacteria.
There are two TCVs prequalified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and available through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. In February 2024, IVI and SK bioscience announced that a third TCV, SKYTyphoid™, also achieved WHO PQ, paving the way for public procurement and increasing the global supply.
Alongside the SETA disease burden study, IVI has been working with colleagues in three African countries to show the real-world impact of TCV vaccination. These studies include a cluster-randomized trial in Agogo, Ghana and two effectiveness studies following mass vaccination in Kisantu, DRC and Imerintsiatosika, Madagascar.
Dr. Birkneh Tilahun Tadesse, Associate Director General at IVI and Head of the Real-World Evidence Department, explains, “Through these vaccine effectiveness studies, we aim to show the full public health value of TCV in settings that are directly impacted by a high burden of typhoid fever.” He adds, “Our final objective of course is to eliminate typhoid or to at least reduce the burden to low incidence levels, and that’s what we are attempting in Fiji with an island-wide vaccination campaign.”
As more countries in typhoid endemic countries, namely in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, consider TCV in national immunization programs, these data will help inform evidence-based policy decisions around typhoid prevention and control.
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About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI)
The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a non-profit international organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme with a mission to discover, develop, and deliver safe, effective, and affordable vaccines for global health.
IVI’s current portfolio includes vaccines at all stages of pre-clinical and clinical development for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect low- and middle-income countries, such as cholera, typhoid, chikungunya, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, hepatitis E, HPV, COVID-19, and more. IVI developed the world’s first low-cost oral cholera vaccine, pre-qualified by the World Health Organization (WHO) and developed a new-generation typhoid conjugate vaccine that is recently pre-qualified by WHO.
IVI is headquartered in Seoul, Republic of Korea with a Europe Regional Office in Sweden, a Country Office in Austria, and Collaborating Centers in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Madagascar. 39 countries and the WHO are members of IVI, and the governments of the Republic of Korea, Sweden, India, Finland, and Thailand provide state funding. For more information, please visit https://www.ivi.int.
Incidence of typhoid fever in Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, and Nigeria (the Severe Typhoid in Africa programme): a population-based study
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