November 9th, 2015 | https://lobelog.com/how-did-turkeys-erdogan-reverse-his-fortunes/#more-31808

How Did Turkey’s Erdogan Reverse His Fortunes?

by Derek Davison
When Turkish voters went to the polls in June, they dealt the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a serious electoral setback, voting the party out of the sole parliamentary majority that it had held since 2002 and leaving Turkey with no majority party. After attempts at forming a coalition government failed over the summer, Erdogan scheduled snap elections for November 1 to resolve the deadlock.
Those snap elections paid off in a big way for Erdogan and the AKP. The party increased its share of the vote nearly nine points from June (when it won 40.9% of the vote) to November (roughly 49.5%) and regained 59 seats, giving it 317 seats in Turkey’s 550-seat Grand National Assembly.
The AKP’s performance significantly exceeded even the rosiest (from the AKP’s perspective) pre-election polling. For much of the summer and into the fall, polls suggested that the AKP might see slight gains in the snap elections but the end result would still be a hung parliament. A number of factors explain the change in the AKP’s fortunes and the fact that such a large portion of the electorate appears to have broken for the party relatively late in the electoral processhttps://lobelog.com/how-did-turkeys-erdogan-reverse-his-fortunes/#more-31808