The Security Council just held a straw poll testing the viability of the candidates for UN Secretary-General. This was the seventh such poll, but the first since the entry of former UAE Ambassador to the UN Lana Nusseibeh into the race. The results offer the first concrete indication of the level of support for Nusseibeh’s candidacy — and they show she is far from being the current frontrunner.
A quick reminder of how these straw polls work: All 15 members of the Council are given identical ballots to indicate whether they “encourage,” “discourage,” or have “no opinion” of each candidate. The ballots in this straw poll did not distinguish between the veto-wielding members of the Council and the other ten members, so we don’t know where these votes are coming from. But they do give an good indication of the strength of a candidate — the more “discourage” votes a candidate receives, the higher the likelihood that at least one of those comes from a veto-wielding member. And, on the other…