the taliban's efforts to disrupt elections in afghanistan, could pose a serious strike against pashtun candidates. these days the taliban are only really active in pashto speaking regions. so if they follow through with their threats, shut down polling places, attack people with purple fingers, etc., that will depress turnout in those regions but give a relative advantage to the non-pashtun areas that don't have a lot of taliban activity.
karzai is a pashtun, while his closest rival, abdullah abdullah is a tajik. i'm not sure if expected voter turnout is included in this poll. but if not, abdullah might end up with even more votes than karzai.
i can't be the only one to think of this, but there really hasn't been much discussion of this in the articles i've read. am i missing something? is ethnic-based voting not a phenomenon in afghanistan? or is it just something that no one likes to talk about?
of course, my theory assumes that the election is actually fair. given how corrupt the karzai government is, it's far from clear that it will be.
