Until now, the situation among the "Future" audience remains somewhat unclear. Most opinion polls in Sunni areas indicate that the scene is ambiguous, with a prevailing tendency towards boycott while attempting to record some breakthroughs. From Beirut II to Sidon to Tripoli, as well as the Chouf region, it is difficult to predict the turnout of the audience who voted for “Future Movement” lists in 2018, and it is also challenging to determine the voting direction of those who decided to participate today. This ambiguity stems from President Saad Hariri's incomplete position regarding his audience. Hariri has personally and politically boycotted the elections, but he has neither called for his audience to boycott nor to participate. He may have aimed to keep the matter ambiguous for a while.
Complicating the scene further is the fact that several Sunni leaders, including former Prime Ministers and even Mufti Daryan, have addressed the Sunni public in general, urging them to participate and vote and not to withdraw. This has generated a feeling among Future Movement leaders close to Hariri that there is an actual effort to exploit Hariri's exit with external insinuations aimed at demonstrating that the Sunni arena remains unaffected by the absence of its leader! This confusion, accompanied by Hariri's personal silence, has led some influencers within the movement to work both publicly and covertly to support a number of candidate lists and personalities orbiting “Future.”
In Beirut II, it has become clear that the list of Nabih Badr, the president of the "Ansar" club, is receiving actual support from someone close to Hariri, who has begun to tour neighborhoods in the Tarik Jadideh area, calling for votes for Badr. Badr himself, after receiving a report on the weakness of his numbers a month and a half before the elections, hastened to change his electoral machinery, utilizing a Future-aligned machine in terms of names, as they use data and contact information that was "smuggled" from the movement's offices!
In Sidon, the scene is somewhat similar, as candidate Youssef Al-Naqqib, who is opposed by Ahmad Hariri, the Secretary General of the Future Movement, shows that the atmosphere in Sidon leans towards him. The same applies to several candidates in the Second Northern District (Tripoli, Minieh, Doniyeh). According to information, the leadership of “Future” is dissatisfied with this disarray, and many advice has been directed to President Hariri to indicate that he is upset with what is happening, and that he should take some step to translate this displeasure publicly, given that his audience feels wronged by Hariri's departure from the scene, and they will respond immediately by boycotting the elections and refraining from voting for the heirs of the situation!
The critical issue here is the timing, and perhaps this is what President Hariri is waiting for. Calling for a boycott months ago would have prompted political leaders to postpone the elections clearly and explicitly, while his moving forward with this step in a few weeks might prevent the country from postponing the elections, as holding them would become a reality. Will Hariri take action and call for a necessary boycott, or will he leave it to his audience to decide on appointing those he has not assigned himself? The balance seems to be tilting more clearly towards the first option.
