Seventh UN straw poll to select the UN Secretary General

The race moves forward, and the vetoes go back into hidding 

By Javier Surasky

The sixth straw poll marked an important shift in the race for the United Nations Secretary-General. For the first time in this process, colored ballots made it possible to distinguish the votes of the five permanent members of the Security Council from those cast by the ten non-permanent members. This showed that every candidate faced discouragement votes from the P5 and changed the question we had been following: it was no longer enough to know who could secure nine votes. We also had to look closely at who could persuade all the permanent members to stop blocking their candidacy.

The seventh straw poll, held on October 30, changes the terms of the analysis once again.

The Council returned to undifferentiated ballots, so we know how many “encourage,” “discourage,” and “no opinion” votes each candidate received, but not which countries cast them. The decision was linked, among other reasons, to the entry of a new candidate, Lana Nusseibeh, and to the view among several Council members that she should first go through a round comparable to those already faced by the candidates who had been in the race.

For our analysis, the consequence is straightforward: we are back to uncertainty, and with it the combinatorial indicator I used in the first five straw polls becomes useful again, allowing us to measure the possibility that none of a candidate’s discouragement votes came from a permanent member.

But the political landscape has also changed. Macky Sall withdrew his candidacy on October 17 after receiving five encouragements and ten discouragements in the sixth poll, three of the latter from the P5. Four days later, the United Arab Emirates nominated Lana Nusseibeh, who therefore entered the race after six rounds of voting had already taken place.

The seventh straw poll thus combines three distinct developments: a greater concentration of support among the candidates at the top of the race, a loss of information about P5 voting, and the actual entry of a latecomer.

The results

The seventh straw poll produced the following result:

Candidate	Encourage	Discourage	No opinion
Rebeca Grynspan	11	4	0
Rafael Grossi	9	4	2
Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett	8	6	1
Lana Nusseibeh	7	6	2
Olara Otunnu	4	11	0
María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés	2	10	3
Ivonne A-Baki	1	14	0

Source: 1 for 8 billion

The table shows a race becoming more concentrated at the top, with Grynspan extending her lead to eleven encouragements, Grossi on nine, Rodrigues-Birkett holding steady at eight, and Nusseibeh entering with seven encouragements, six discouragements, and two “no opinion” positions.

But, as we have already noted in earlier posts in this series, those numbers tell only part of the story.

In the previous round, Grynspan, Rodrigues-Birkett, and Grossi each received two discouragement votes from permanent members. Today we can see that Grynspan and Grossi have reduced their total discouragements to four, but we cannot know whether that improvement reflects shifts among the permanent members, the non-permanent members, or both. The information we gained in the sixth poll has disappeared again.

Back to deal with uncertainty

Faced with that loss of information, I return to the same indicator used in the earlier rounds. Its purpose is to show, given the total number of discouragement votes received by a candidate, the proportion of all possible distributions in which none of those discouragements would come from any of the five permanent members.

The results for the seventh poll are:

Candidate	Discouragements	Possibility that none came from the P5
Rebeca Grynspan	4	15.38%
Rafael Grossi	4	15.38%
Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett	6	4.20%
Lana Nusseibeh	6	4.20%
Olara Otunnu	11	0%
María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés	10	0.033%
Ivonne A-Baki	14	0%

Source: Own

The indicator's return does not erase what we learned in the previous round. We know that on October 16 Grynspan and Grossi each received two discouragement votes from the P5. We also know that both now have only four total discouragements, whereas Grynspan previously had five and Grossi and Rodrigues-Birkett had six each. In other words, discouragements fell for the first two and remained unchanged for the third.

What we do not know is who changed position. We therefore cannot say that any of them has “overcome vetoes” or reduced opposition within the P5.

Let us look at where each candidacy now stands.

Grynspan: eleven votes and an open question

Rebeca Grynspan records the strongest result of any candidate in this round: eleven encouragements, four discouragements, and no “no opinion” positions. That means two more encouragements and one fewer discouragement than in the sixth straw poll, while the only previously undecided vote has now disappeared.

In numerical terms, her position is clearly stronger: she is two votes above the nine-vote threshold required for a possible Security Council recommendation and remains the candidate with the broadest support. But the return to undifferentiated ballots prevents us from knowing whether the two permanent members who discouraged her on October 16 changed their positions, and that is the decisive piece of information we are missing. Grynspan is closer to a clear majority, but it would be premature to say that she is any closer than before to overcoming the P5 obstacle.

Grossi reaches nine votes

Rafael Grossi also improves significantly. He moves from 8-6-1 to 9-4-2: one additional encouragement, two fewer discouragements, and one additional “no opinion” position, allowing him to reach the nine-vote threshold for the first time.

His situation, however, presents the same information problem as Grynspan’s. In the previous round, we knew that two permanent members discouraged him and that another remained in the “no opinion” category, but his four discouragements are now undifferentiated.

The arithmetic shows progress, but the political question that determines whether the Council can recommend him to the General Assembly for appointment as Secretary-General remains unresolved.

This creates a peculiar situation: Grynspan and Grossi have reached or surpassed the number of votes needed to win the race for the Secretary-Generalship, and both have significantly reduced their discouragements, but we cannot know whether any of the blockages identified two weeks earlier has disappeared.

Rodrigues-Birkett: stability begins to weigh

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett maintains exactly the same result as in the previous round, 8-6-1, a degree of stability that can be read in two ways.

On the one hand, she remains competitive and just one vote short of the nine-vote threshold. On the other, while Grynspan and Grossi improve, she remains where she was.

The sixth round showed that two of her six discouragements came from permanent members and, obviously, the seventh poll does not allow us to know whether that situation has changed.

Nusseibeh enters the race

Lana Nusseibeh requires a different analysis because there is no previous round to compare her result against. Her first ballot produces a 7-6-2 outcome.

For a candidacy submitted only nine days before the poll, entering directly in fourth place with seven encouragements is a politically significant result. It is not enough to place her among the candidates best positioned by vote count, but neither can she be treated as a marginal addition.

The question of latecomers that we had been raising since the fifth straw poll is no longer hypothetical: we now have at least one latecomer in the race. But the result does not yet justify describing her as a dark horse. That would require her to emerge as a viable compromise candidate if the current frontrunners remain blocked, and we still do not know whether that will happen.

The rest of the field

Olara Otunnu remains on four encouragements, but his discouragements rise from ten to eleven, making it mathematically impossible for all of them to have come from the ten elected members: at least one must necessarily come from a permanent member.

María Fernanda Espinosa moves from 3-9-3 to 2-10-3. With ten discouragements, the possibility that none came from the P5 is extremely small and politically almost implausible.

Ivonne A-Baki remains at 1-14-0, leaving her in the same basic position as Otunnu: it is a fact that he faces opposition from several permanent members.

Without substantial changes in current positions, it is difficult to imagine a path toward recommendation for any of these three candidates.

Has the field really improved?

If we add up the results of the seven current candidates, the seventh poll produces 42 encouragements, 55 discouragements, and eight “no opinion” positions, compared with 38, 60, and seven in the previous round. But this already means comparing different sets of candidates: Sall took part in the sixth round and then withdrew, while Nusseibeh appears for the first time in the seventh. To some extent, therefore, the totals reflect that change in the composition of the field.

If we look only at the six candidates who took part in both rounds, the change is much more modest:

• Sixth straw poll: 33 encouragements, 50 discouragements, and 7 “no opinion” positions.

• Seventh straw poll: 35 encouragements, 49 discouragements, and 6 “no opinion” positions.

That means just two additional encouragements, one fewer discouragement, and one fewer “no opinion” position.

What we do see is a greater concentration at the top of the table and, paradoxically, less information to assess whether that concentration can translate into a recommendation.

The transparency of the process seems to advance and retreat with the Council's political needs.

Closer to a dark horse?

In the fifth straw poll analysis, I suggested that a deteriorating field could create incentives for the entry of latecomers or dark horses. In the sixth, the colored ballots reinforced that hypothesis by showing that the strongest candidates faced opposition from permanent members, and now we have the first late entry.

But the seventh poll also shows that there is still room for an outcome among the candidates already in the race, and that could mean we are moving closer to a decision. If, however, opposition from permanent members remains in place, Nusseibeh’s entry may be only the beginning.

The experience of 1981, with the election of Pérez de Cuéllar, which we discussed in an earlier post, remains useful as a warning rather than a prediction. That process required sixteen failed formal ballots, cross-vetoes, and the withdrawal of the two leading contenders before space opened for consensus around a new Secretary-General. The 2026 process is not yet at that point. But this may encourage others to consider entering the race, while the Council has once again hidden the information that would allow us to know whether its two best-positioned candidates can actually overcome the P5 obstacle.

The seventh straw poll therefore leaves us in a paradoxical position: the race appears closer to a decision in numerical terms, while once again becoming harder to read politically.

The question is again the same one we were trying to answer before the colored ballots: how many of the discouragements we still see conceal a potential veto? For now, once again, all we can do is calculate the uncertainty.