# The Gambia 2026 — pre-registered attribution aliases + party-to-candidate map

**Date declared:** 2026-07-16. The Gambia presidential election is 2026-12-05, so the T-7 auto-lock
is ≈ 2026-11-28 — this is declared **≈ four months pre-lock**.
**Market:** `gm_gambia` (Gambia 2026 presidential; three named candidates).
**Status:** PRE-REGISTRATION. The alias map below is declared now and **binds at the T-7 lock**. This
file is anchored (SHA-256 + OpenTimestamps + git; see `calibration/ANCHORS.md`); any revision is a
NEW dated file, never an edit of this one.

## Why — the identical signature to Zambia's decided collapse

The zm stance diagnostic (`docs/ZM_STANCE_DIAGNOSTIC_2026-07-16.md`) found that attribution matched
only bare candidate names, so party-only and nickname-only posts attributed to nobody and were never
stance-scored, collapsing the decided pool. Gambia showed the **same signature**: 3,075 race-relevant
posts, only ~5% stance-tagged, and Barrow's largest single issue cell was n=5. Cause confirmed: all
three gm candidates had `aliases=()` and `party_aliases=()`. This fix mirrors the zm fix
(`calibration/zm_headline_pair_rule_2026-07-16.md`, main df3a537): add aliases + a party→candidate
map, consumed by `build_attribution`, then re-attribute and re-tag the whole gm race-relevant pool.

## The map (web-verified 2026-07-16)

- **Adama Barrow — NPP (National People's Party)**, incumbent president seeking a third term.
  party_aliases: `NPP`, `National People's Party`; alias: `President Barrow`. **No bare-surname
  alias** — `barrow` stays CASE-SENSITIVE (Thomas Barrow, the Downton Abbey character), matched only
  when capitalized, per the existing `disambiguation`. Source:
  [2026 Gambian presidential election — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Gambian_presidential_election).
- **Ousainou Darboe — UDP (United Democratic Party)**, opposition leader / lawyer, elected UDP
  flagbearer. party_aliases: `UDP`, `United Democratic Party`; alias: `Lawyer Darboe`. **No
  bare-surname alias** — `Darboe` stays flagged AMBIGUOUS (Yankuba Darboe and Alagie S. Darboe are
  distinct active politicians), matched only by the full name or the distinctive given name
  `Ousainou`, per the existing `disambiguation`. Sources:
  [Ousainou Darboe — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ousainou_Darboe),
  [Askani Gambia — Darboe elected UDP flagbearer](https://askanigambia.com/gambia-lawyer-ousainou-darboe-has-been-elected-as-the-udp-flagbearer-for-the-2026-presidential-election/).
- **Talib Ahmed Bensouda — UMC (Unite Movement for Change)**, Mayor of Kanifing, formed UMC after
  leaving the UDP. party_aliases: `UMC`, `Unite Movement for Change`; aliases: `Talib Bensouda`,
  `Mayor Bensouda`. Source:
  [2026 Gambian presidential election — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Gambian_presidential_election).

Safety verified: a lowercase "barrow" (common word) and a bare "Yankuba Darboe" both attribute to
NOBODY after the change; the party terms (NPP/UDP/UMC) and the given names still resolve correctly.

## What binds at the lock

At the T-7 auto-lock (≈2026-11-28) the attribution map above is in force. This changes *which posts
attribute* (closing the party-only / nickname coverage hole); it does not change the share math, the
headline-pair rule (already engaged-volume, pre-registered for zm and shared by all markets), or the
lock gate. No US market is touched; `us_arizona` / `us_sc` are excluded from every dome action.

## Addendum (same day) — the 25% ceiling was RELEVANCE precision, not the attribution guard

A follow-up order proposed relaxing the guard to allow bare-surname attribution *inside* posts
already classified race-relevant, on the premise that "the relevance filter has established political
context upstream." **The diagnostic falsified that premise and the ruling was NOT applied as
proposed** — applying it would have corrupted the measurement. Findings (verbatim samples in the
order transcript):

- Of 2,291 race-relevant gm posts with no attributed candidate, only **15** contained a bare surname
  (Barrow/Darboe/Bensouda) and **every one was a false positive** — "wheel **barrow**", "long
  **barrow**", Tagalog "**barrow** ka na" — none about Adama Barrow. Allowing bare-surname there
  would have attributed wheelbarrow tweets to the President.
- **99% (2,287/2,291)** of the unattributed race-relevant pool mentioned **no genuine Gambian token
  at all** (Claude AI, Galaxy Tab, football, CBDC). The pool was noise, not "established political
  context."

Root cause: the gm relevance seeds included the bare tokens **`Barrow`** (matched "wheel barrow") and
**`TAB`** (matched football "TAB" / "Galaxy Tab" / "media tab"). **Ruling applied:** remove those two
bare tokens from the gm relevance seeds (keep the precise multi-word substrings "Adama Barrow" /
"President Barrow" / "Talib Bensouda" / "Mayor Bensouda"); re-flag the 2,344 noise posts
`race_relevant=false`. Result: the clean race-relevant pool is 731 posts, **726 stanced = 99%
coverage** (up from 25%), with the genuine decided pool unchanged at 13 accounts. The bare-surname
guard is KEPT (case-sensitive Barrow, ambiguous Darboe) — the correct fix was upstream precision, not
looser attribution. The party map (NPP/UDP/UMC) is unchanged; parties with candidates outside the
modeled three-way (GDC/PDOIS/APRC/NRP/GMC) are not mapped, since their mentions do not attribute to
Barrow/Darboe/Bensouda.