SHORT of an outright victory for Turkey’s authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it was the worst result the country’s opposition could have imagined. The challengers had appeared to be heading into the presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14th with a good head of steam. But by 10am on the following day, with more than 99% of the ballot boxes opened, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the Nation Alliance, a coalition of six opposition parties, had secured only 45% in the presidential election, according to Turkey’s election board.

That is enough to force Mr Erdogan, who had by then received 49.4%, into a run-off. But it was well below what pollsters, as well as Mr Kilicdaroglu himself, had expected. A third candidate, the nationalist Sinan Ogan, received 5.2% of the vote, a surprisingly strong showing. The second round will take place in two weeks, on May 28th.

Mr Kilicdaroglu’s alliance, headed by his own Republican People’s Party (CHP), performed even worse in the parliamentary vote, where it had won only 35.1%, which Turkey’s complex electoral system is projected to translate into about 213 out of the 600 seats. Mr Erdogan’s bloc, known as the People’s Alliance, led by his own Justice and Development (AK) party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), walked away with 49.4%, enough to retain a comfortable majority (an estimated 321 seats) in the assembly. A smaller opposition alliance headed by Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), received 10.5% (around 66 seats).

Mr Ogan may now be able to play kingmaker. In recent interviews, the nationalist candidate suggested that he and his party were eyeing ministerial posts in exchange for an endorsement. Mr Ogan will probably also demand that the opposition distance itself even further from the HDP, which most Turks, and especially nationalists, see as an extension of an outlawed Kurdish insurgent group. But so underwhelming was Mr Kilicdaroglu’s performance that the CHP leader would have to woo nearly all of Mr Ogan’s voters to have a shot at winning the second round. That seems unlikely. For the first time in his career, Mr Erdogan had entered the elections trailing his main rival in the polls. He now appears the clear favourite to win in the second round.

Appearing at the CHP headquarters in Ankara, Mr Kilicdaroglu accused AK of delaying the results by filing objections in districts where the opposition was ahead, but then acknowledged that a second round was on the horizon. Some time later, in the small hours, Mr Erdogan addressed thousands of his own supporters from the balcony of his own party’s headquarters, where he has delivered scores of victory speeches. “Somebody is in the kitchen,” he said, taunting Mr Kilicdaroglu, known for recording social media videos from his modestly furnished kitchen. “And we are on the balcony.”

A number of polls published a couple of days before the elections had showed Mr Kilicdaroglu with just over 50% of the vote, enough to win outright in the first round, and a few percentage points ahead of Mr Erdogan, who has run the country for 20 years, first as prime minister, latterly as president. This came after Muharrem Ince, a former opposition CHP politician and potential spoiler candidate, dropped out of the race three days before the elections. Mr Kilicdaroglu was thought to be on track to win most of Mr Ince’s support, probably around 2%. But many of those votes may have gone to Mr Ogan instead.

The key to Mr Erdogan’s success in the first round was that he convinced enough voters that the election was less about the economy, plagued by 43% inflation, than about identity, national pride, and security, says Ahmet Han, an international relations professor at Beykoz University. He did so by showing off a bewildering array of new projects, including Turkey’s biggest warship, its first electric car, and a Russian-built nuclear plant, and by scaremongering.

The opposition, he claimed in one campaign speech after another, was beholden to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an outlawed separatist group, and to the Gulen community, a religious sect Turkey blames for a violent coup attempt in 2016.

Mr Kilicdaroglu is down, but not quite out. To win in the second round, he and the rest of the opposition will have to refocus the entire debate on the economy, says Mr Han: “That is their only chance.” The market reaction to AK’s victory and the prospect of five more years of Erdogan rule may make a difference as well. Foreign investors, who had been frozen or driven out of Turkish markets, the result of Mr Erdogan’s loony economic policies, seemed to be pricing in a possible opposition victory. Now that the opposite scenario is more likely, pressure on the lira is likely to mount. The currency fell by 0.4% against the dollar early on May 15th, while the main stock market index opened down by more than 6%.

The stakes in the election could not be much higher. The outcome will determine the direction of Turkey’s foreign policy, especially its increasingly cosy relationship with Russia, and the shape of its economy, currently warped by galloping inflation, creeping capital controls, and the lowest real interest rates anywhere in the world. A constitution that allows Mr Erdogan to keep the courts, the central bank and other state institutions under his thumb, as well as the patronage system over which he presides, are on the line, too. Five more years of rule by Mr Erdogan would entrench his brand of autocracy. An opposition victory in the run-off, though now looking unlikely, would offer a chance to restore democratic rule and a path to economic stability.

The election campaign had been uncharacteristically sombre in its early stages, largely as a result of the earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in the south of the country at the start of the year. That changed once Mr Erdogan accused the opposition of teaming up with “terrorists”, and of courting “deviant” LGBT groups. His interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, fanned tensions by warning of a “political coup attempt” on election night. A week before the elections, pro-government protesters attacked an opposition rally in the east of the country, wounding about a dozen people.

Elections in Turkey have become perhaps the last valve for dissent. But Turks had not given up on democracy, the turnout in the elections showed. More than 88% of eligible voters went to the polls on May 14th, a very high number by any standards. Despite high tensions, no violent incidents took place on election day, and there were no serious allegations of electoral fraud. ■