Sri Lankan Presidential Election 2019 — Guide to winning Colombo District
The 2019 Sri Lankan presidential election is scheduled to be held on 16th November. This will be the eight presidential election in Sri Lankan history, with approximately 16 million eligible voters and a record breaking 35 candidates.
Few months ago, many expected this election to be an easy win for Sri Lankan Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) candidate Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Considering SLPP’s landslide victory in 2018 local government election and the weak public confidence in current government due to leadership failure which led to Easter terror attacks on April 2019, this election should clearly favor the SLPP candidate.
However, the selection of Sajith Premadasa as the United National Party (UNP) candidate and the uncertainty around Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s citizenship made this race more interesting. The political drama around deciding a UNP candidate helped Sajith Premadasa to get the backing of the UNP loyalists and more importantly, to distance himself from current Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Minister Ravi Karunanayake.
In the past few weeks, Sajith’s campaign has gained substantial momentum thanks to a packed schedule of meetings and hefty investments in print and digital media channels. However, during the same time period Gotabhaya has cleared his citizenship issues and gained the support of Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) which will further strengthen his position.
Leading up to the election, I thought of writing few articles about the districts and polling divisions of Sri Lanka and what each candidate need to do to win the election. The first article will focus on Colombo district.
General Statistics and Past Presidential Election
Colombo district is home to 1,670,403 eligible voters according to official elector registration statistics of 2018, this amounts to 10.4% of overall voters of Sri Lanka. In terms of population, only Gampaha district has more voters than Colombo.
Therefore, Colombo district has a significant influence on the final result, in fact apart from Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2005, every other candidate that won Colombo has went on to win the presidency.
In terms of margins, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga getting 64.8% of the overall votes is the most dominant victory so far, even though that election can be considered as an outlier as UNP was considerably weakened at that stage due to the assassination of their candidate Gamini Dissanayake couple of weeks before the election. In 2015, Maithripala Sirisena received 55.9% of the votes thanks to the broader coalition which included the support of UNP, JVP, JHU, and few other parties.
When considering, third party candidates, Ossie Abeygunasekera (Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya) and Nandana Gunathilake (JVP) received 4.6% of the votes in 1988 and 1999 elections.
Polling Divisions and Voter Behavior
Colombo district consist of 15 polling divisions and those can be classified in to 5 groups based on the voter behavior in the past elections as given below.
UNP generally win big in Colombo city (Central, North, East, and West), Borella, and Dehiwala polling divisions and has the advantage in Kolonnawa and Kotte areas. These divisions amount to 39.4% of the overall eligible voter base. Majority of the Muslim (Sri Lankan Moors) and Tamil population in Colombo live in these areas and in past large portion of them have voted in favor of the UNP candidates.
Likewise, SLPP candidate is expected to dominate in Homagama, Kaduwela, Kesbewa, Maharagama, and Avissawella divisions and has the advantage in Moratuwa. These highly populated suburban areas in Colombo district amount for 56.4% of the eligible voter base.
Ratmalana polling division remains hard to predict. Interestingly, based on the past presidential elections, the candidate that won Ratmalana has always went on to win the presidency. Same can be said about Moratuwa, however, recent political returns suggest SLPP might have the advantage there.
Key Success Factors to win in Colombo
For Sajith Premadasa
To win Sajith needs to get;
· 75% — 80% of the votes in Colombo Central, Colombo North, and Colombo West
· ~65% of the votes in Colombo East, Borella, and Dehiwala
· Close to 55% of the votes in Kotte, Kolonnawa and Ratmalana
Challenges faced in achieving these goals include;
· Gotabhaya Rajapaksa did a commendable job in making Colombo clean and attractive while he was in charge of Urban Development. Therefore, there is possibility that he will perform much better than his brother did in above mentioned polling divisions.
· JVP has a fixed voter base of ~6% in Colombo. Therefore, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka and other third party candidates are expected to win close to 8% of the votes in this election. Majority of those votes were casted in favor of President Sirisena in 2015.
For Gotabhaya Rajapaksa
To win Gota needs to get;
· More than 60% of the votes in Homagama, Kaduwela, Kesbewa, Maharagama, and Avissawella
· ~55% of the vote in Moratuwa
· Winning Ratmalana and reduce the margin of defeat to less than 4% in Kotte and Kolonnawa
Challenges faced in achieving these goals include;
· JVP has its strongest base in the Homagama, Kaduwela, Kesbewa, Maharagama, and Avissawella. Therefore, getting 60% in all these division will not be straight forward.
· Even though, majority of the SLFP votes are likely to vote for SLPP based on the agreement between the two parties, political crossovers from SLFP to UNP might have an impact on the voter decision making.
Impact of the third party candidates
Among the third party/alternative candidates Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, General Mahesh Senanayake and Rohan Pallewatte has a decent following in Colombo.
Initially, there were expectations that these candidates might receive up to 10% — 12% of the overall votes of Colombo. However, when the race between the major party candidates tightens up, many floating voters tend to rally around them, thus I expect the third party candidates to end up with 8% — 10% of the vote. Also, it’s safe to predict that majority of these votes to go for Anura Kumara Dissanayaka.
Predicted result for Colombo District
I tried to predict the results of each polling division using past results and current political conditions and the results are given below.
This estimate can be considered as a best case scenario for Sajith’s campaign and it assumes his campaign will gain/retain the momentum going forward, while Gota’s campaign remains fairly stagnant. According to this Gota will win Colombo district with 47.0% of the votes, while Sajith receives 45.0%.
However, if we look at a more favorable situation for Gota, assuming his campaign manage to get full support of SLFP voters and a considerable share of new voters, he has the potential to reach 50% of the votes in Colombo District.
What do you think will happen? Like to know more about your opinion on this topic.