Incumbent disadvantage in a swing province: Eastern Province in Zambia’s 2021 general election

ABSTRACT

Might incumbency entail disadvantages as well as advantages? This article examines the performance of incumbent president Edgar Lungu and the Patriotic Front (PF) in Zambia's Eastern Province in the 2021 election. Eastern Province was a ‘swing’ region in that neither of the two major national political parties had deep-rooted support, despite Lungu's and the PF's strong performance in 2015-16. Survey data shows that voters punished the incumbent government in 2021 for its poor management of the economy (and, to a lesser extent, corruption). Interviews with provincial politicians and documentary sources reveal the challenges facing the incumbent in maintaining the coalition that had brought it electoral success in 2015-16. The case of Eastern Province illustrates how, in such swing regions, incumbency can be a disadvantage as well as an advantage, as the incumbent president is held responsible for the state of the economy and the opportunities to local elites. In countries where national electoral success requires winning decisively in such swing regions, even incumbent presidents and parties face a significant possibility of electoral defeat.

KEYWORDS:

• Zambia
• voting
• incumbent advantage
• incumbent disadvantage
• patriotic front
• candidate selection

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for comments and criticisms when parts of this paper were presented at workshops of the Zambia Elections Research Network in May and October 2021 and the Political Parties in Africa project in March 2022. I am especially grateful to Michael Wahman and Robert Nyenhuis for detailed and incisive comments, some but not all of which I have been able to address. I am grateful also to the interviewees who met or talked with me in Zambia in October/November 2021 (in some cases without agreeing to being named) and to Marja Hinfelaar and Michael Wahman for assistance with election results data. I thank Ubuntu Research and Rural Development Company Ltd. for implementing the Zambia Election Panel Study survey; Ellen Lust and the University of Gothenberg for initiating ZEPS; Erica Ann Metheney and Kirk Ammerman data collection support; and Rose Shaber-Twedt, Dalila Sabanic, and Julie Nadler Visser for administrative support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Bleck and van de Walle, Electoral Politics; Cheeseman and Klaas, How to Steal an Election.

2 Sishuwa et al., “Legal autocratization”.

3 Lusaka Times, “Police in Chipata try to block UPND campaigns”, 30 July 2021. https://www.lusakatimes.com/2021/07/30/330253/ (accessed January 2022).

4 Klašnja, “Corruption and the incumbency disadvantage”.

5 Klašnja and Titiunik, “The incumbency curse”.

6 Wilkins, “Subnational Turnover”.

7 Bowles and Marx, “Turnover and Accountability’; see also Throup, “Elections”.

8 Almost 900,000 out of 7 million registered voters.

9 Rakner, Political and Economic Liberalisation.

10 Larmer and Fraser, “Of Cabbages and King Cobra”.

11 Cheeseman and Hinfelaar, “Parties”; Siachiwena, “The 2011–2016 Zambian Elections”.

12 Wahman and Boone, “Captured countryside?”

13 Green, “The politics of ethnic identity”; Seekings, “Voters, parties and elections”.

14 Hern, “Preferences without Platforms”; Seekings, “Voters, parties and elections”.

15 Bratton, Bhavnani and Chen, “Voting Intentions in Africa”.

16 Despite public controversy, it has never been clear whether Lungu was born in or near Chadiza (in Eastern Province) or in Ndola (on the Copperbelt), and it was even rumoured at one time that he had been born in Malawi.

17 Figure 2 plots Lungu's shares of the total votes for the two major parties, leaving aside the small numbers of votes for other parties’ presidential candidates.

18 Zambian Observer, ‘Violence is not needed, we condemn violence – HH’, 31 July 2021. https://zambianobserver.com/violence-is-not-needed-we-condemn-violence-hh/ (accessed, January 2022).

19 Zambia, “2015 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey”.

20 Information about Afrobarometer's methodology is available on www.afrobarometer.org. The national sample comprised 1,200 respondents, of whom 136 were in Eastern Province, in 17 enumeration areas spread across 15 of the province's 18 constituencies.

21 Mattes and Krönke, “The consequences of partisanship”.

22 The ZEPS survey sample comprised a sample of respondents with mobile phones drawn from a larger and representative sample compiled in 2019. In Eastern, the sample was limited to people who had lived in 2019 in districts along the Malawi border. The PF won the same share of the presidential vote in these districts as in the districts that were not sampled. In the second and third ‘waves’ of the survey, the panel was ‘refreshed’ with additional respondents. Results reported below have been checked for differences between balanced and unbalanced panels. ZEPS: Lust, Ellen; Beardsworth, Nicole; Krönke, Matthias; Seekings, Jeremy; and Wahman, Michael. Zambian Election Panel Survey Rounds 1–3 (University of Cape Town and the Program on Governance and Local Development at University of Gothenburg, 2021);

23 FAO, “Country briefing: Zambia”, 6 December 2022. https://www.fao.org/giews/countrybrief/country.jsp?code=ZMB (accessed January 2022).

24 Seekings, “Voters, parties and elections”.

25 Arriola et al., “Paying to party”.

26 Resnick, Urban Poverty; Sishuwa, ‘I am Zambia's redeemer’.

27 Interview with Menyani Zulu, Lusaka, 5 November 2021.

28 Interview with Moses Mawere, Lusaka, 5 November 2021. I was told similar stories by numerous other PF and former PF activists in the province.

29 The PF appears to have adopted this system in about 2009, in preparation for the 2011 elections – according to then secretary-general Wynter Kabimba. I am grateful to Sishuwa Sishuwa for this information.

30 The Mast Online, “Corruption during adoption haunts PF”, 2 August 2021. https://www.zambiawatchdog.com/corruption-during-adoption-haunts-pf/ (accessed January 2022). Kw 1 million was, at the time, the equivalent of about US$ 45,000.

31 Arriola et al., “Paying to party”.

32 Warren, Candidate Selection.

33 Ibid

34 Zambian Watchdog, “Corruption during adoption haunts PF”, 2 August 2021. https://www.zambiawatchdog.com/corruption-during-adoption-haunts-pf/

35 The Mast Online, “To say PF will come out victorious we’ll be lying, says ex-Molanzi MP”, 15 May 2021. https://www.themastonline.com/2021/05/15/to-say-pf-will-come-out-victorious-well-be-lying-says-ex-milanzi-mp/ (accessed January 2022).

36 Interviews, Petauke, November 2021.

37 The Mast Online, “Luangeni candidate says he has capacity to change the area”, 7 August 2021. https://www.themastonline.com/2021/08/07/luangeni-candidate-says-he-has-capacity-to-change-the-area/ (accessed January 2022). Also: telephonic interview with Moses Moyo, 8 November 2021.

38 Ulande Nkomesha, “Lubusha eyes Vincent Mwale's Chipangali seat”, Diggers News, 18 March 2021. https://diggers.news/local/2021/03/18/lubusha-eyes-vincent-mwales-chipangali-seat/ (accessed January 2022).

39 Zambian Watchdog, “Corruption during adoption haunts PF”, 2 August 2021. https://www.zambiawatchdog.com/corruption-during-adoption-haunts-pf/

40 Interviews with, inter alia: George Mwanza, Chipata, 22 October 2021; Moses Moyo, October 2021; Peter Banda, Chadiza, 26 October 2021; Menyani Zulu, Lusaka, 5 November 2021; Obet Phiri, Lusaka, 31 October 2021; Moses Mutale, Petauke, 27 October 2021.

41 Lusaka Times, “Police in Chipata try to block UPND campaigns-HH detained for over 2 h at the airport”, 30 July 2021. https://www.lusakatimes.com/2021/07/30/330253/ (accessed January 2022).

42 The first ZEPS poll found that about 45% of respondents feared election violence ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’.

43 Resnick, Urban Poverty.

44 Seekings, “Voters, parties and elections”.

Additional information

Funding

The Zambia Election Panel Study (ZEPS) was supported by the University of Cape Town and Swedish Research Council Recruitment Grant (Swedish Research Council – E0003801; PI: Pam Fredman).