AKP-MHP highway to determine poll outcome

Research companies have been revealing the results of their opinion polls just a few days ahead of Turkey's Nov. 1 re-election.

All except one predict that the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) will be around the 42-43 percent band, plus or minus 2 points. The outlier comes from A&G, whose chairman Adil Gür has claimed that the AK Parti could win 47.5 percent of votes and thus regain the majority it lost on June 7 by a clear margin, reestablishing single-party rule. If that turns out to be true, it would mean a rise in AK Parti votes of almost 7 percent in just five months.

None of the polls predict a drop in the votes of the social democratic opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), which won 24.8 percent in June. They now show the CHP in the 26-28 percent band, despite an estimated 2-3 percent of potential CHP voters (out of the whole electorate) who are likely to vote for the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), especially in big western cities, in order not to let the HDP drop below the 10 percent threshold. If the HDP does not pass the threshold it will not be able to enter parliament, which will mean almost certain victory for the AK Parti and President Tayyip Erdo?an due to a complicated calculation method determining the number of seats won.

Both President Erdo?an and Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu hoped that a resumption of terror acts by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) could make Kurdish voters regret voting for the HDP, thus returning some of them back to the AK Parti and pushing the HDP below the threshold. But this seems unlikely. None of the polls show the HDP below 10 percent and some even show it above the 13.4 percent it received in June.

No polls show the Nationalist...