The Security Council just held its second straw poll to gauge the viability of the eight declared candidates for UN Secretary-General. We appear to have a new front-runner—however, the lead is narrow.
For the poll, each of the 15 members of the Security Council voted secretly in a ballot in which they indicated whether they “encourage,” “discourage,” or have “no opinion” of a particular candidate. Importantly, the ballots do not distinguish between whether a vote comes from one of the five veto-wielding permanent members or one of the other ten Security Council members. Those color-coded ballots will come later in the process. But this poll is nonetheless telling in terms of the degree of support (and the degree of opposition) that each candidate receives.
And today, Guyana’s Ambassador to the UN, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, emerged as the front-runner in the race to replace António Guterres when his term expires at the end of this year.
Here are the results, courtesy of PassBlue.
When analyzing the results, the most revealing number is the amount of “discourage” votes a candidate receives. That’s for the simple reason that the greater the number of “discourage” votes, the more likely it is that one of those came from a veto-wielding member of the Council, any one of which would sink a candidate’s chances.
Using that metric, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett is the front-runner with just three “discourage” votes. However, she is followed closely behind by María Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s former foreign minister and a former President of the General Assembly, with three “discourage” votes, and Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, who is head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, with four “discourage” votes.
What’s notable about these results is also how they compare to the previous straw poll, held last month. Following that poll, Grynspan was the clear leader, with just one “discourage” vote and ten “encourage” votes. But over the last month, three other UNSC members signaled their discouragement with her candidacy.
This is part of a broader trend, though: in the first poll, Rodrigues-Birkett and Espinosa each received two “discourage” votes, but now they both have three “discourage” votes.
So what to make of all this?
Well, first, I would be remiss not to note that the two leading candidates, Espinosa and Rodrigues-Birkett, were both recent guests on my Global Dispatches podcast. You can find my conversation with Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett right here on Substack, and the María Espinosa episode here. Both are also freely available everywhere, including on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Clearly, there’s a Global Dispatches → straw poll bump!
But more broadly, these results show that there are three clear front-runners, with Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett on top. They also show that some candidates are longshots at this point. For example, IAEA Chief Rafael Grossi jumped from just two “discourage” votes in the first straw poll to six today. Having this many “discourage” votes at this point greatly increases the chance that one of those votes is from a P5 member.
That said, this race is still wide open! It could be that the current front-runners are facing opposition from a P5 member, and that none of the “discourage” votes for candidates lower on the ballot are from veto-wielding members. We just don’t know. And we won’t know until color coded ballots are introduced later in the process.
Also, new candidates are tossing their hats into the ring frequently. Last week, Ugandan diplomat Olara Otunnu joined the race. This week, Ecuador’s Ivonne Baki joined the race. I would imagine that, with such inconclusive results, we’ll see more candidates join the race in the coming week
I’ll obviously be following this all closely—and hope to bring you more conversations with candidates in the coming weeks. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next episode of To Save Us From Hell next week in which Anjali Dayal and I break down these results even further!
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