Security Council's fifth straw poll leaves Grynspan ahead and short of a consensus

The UN Security Council held its fifth straw poll on Wednesday on the candidates to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general. Aglaia Balta, the Greek ambassador and president of the Council for October, told reporters that the round had taken place. Each candidate will be told the result through the permanent representative of the state that nominated them. The president of the General Assembly will be told that a poll happened. The numbers will not be published. Straw polls are informal, closed and, until the Council chooses otherwise, secret in their official form.

Guterres's term ends on 31 December 2026. The next secretary-general takes office on 1 January 2027. Seven candidates are still in the race. They are Ivonne A-Baki, a former Ecuadorian minister nominated in this process with Tonga's backing; Maria Fernanda Espinosa, a former president of the General Assembly and former foreign and defence minister of Ecuador, endorsed by Antigua and Barbuda; Rafael Grossi of Argentina, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Rebeca Grynspan, a former vice president of Costa Rica and secretary-general of UNCTAD, nominated by Costa Rica; Olara Otunnu of Uganda, a former UN under-secretary-general; Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana's permanent representative; and Macky Sall, a former president of Senegal.

A private tally that is not the Council's text

PassBlue reported that it had seen the Wednesday numbers. On that tally Grynspan remained first, with 9 encourage votes, down from 10 on 29 September. Discourage votes against her doubled to 6. A discourage ballot can be a veto by a permanent member, or it can be an elected member's objection. The ballot does not say which. Council diplomats told PassBlue that the next poll is set for 16 October and may be colour-coded, so that the five permanent members' papers can be told apart from the other ten. Even then, a specific capital's vote is not printed.

The same tally showed a sharp drop for Rodrigues-Birkett. She received 5 encourage, 9 discourage and 1 no opinion. In the first poll, on 30 July, she had 9 encourage, 2 discourage and 4 no opinion. That is the largest swing in the five rounds. Sall had 5 encourage. Espinosa had 3. Otunnu had 3. A-Baki had none. PassBlue said none of those four had made a sustained advance across the series, and that the Wednesday sheet pointed down for them.

What an encourage vote is worth

An encourage vote is not a pledge. It is a slip in a room of fifteen, cast to see who is still viable. Grynspan's 9 is a lead. It is not the consensus the Council needs before it can send a name to the General Assembly. Six discourage votes, if even one of them is a permanent member, are enough to block a formal recommendation. The colour-coded round on 16 October is designed to show whether the resistance is among the five. Until that round, a campaign can still treat a discourage as an elected member's bargaining chip rather than a veto.

Grossi's name is on the candidate list Balta's presidency is working from, and Xinhua included him among the seven. PassBlue's paragraph on the four who had not advanced did not give his Wednesday figure in the summary that circulated. The absence of an official sheet is the point. Capitals brief their own candidate. Journalists piece together a table. The Council's only on-record sentence is Balta's: the fifth round has taken place.

The calendar under the slips

Three months remain before Guterres leaves. A colour-coded poll on 16 October can narrow the field or freeze it. If Grynspan's discourage votes include a permanent member, her lead in encourage votes will not be enough, and the race reopens among Sall, Rodrigues-Birkett and the rest. If the colour-coding shows the six discourage votes are all elected members, her path is clearer than Wednesday's raw total suggests. The General Assembly does not elect until the Council recommends. Wednesday did not produce a recommendation. It produced a private ranking, a public confirmation that the ranking happened, and a date, 16 October, when the papers may finally show which of the fifteen are standing in the way.