Have things shaken out yet after Germany’s election? I’m wondering what the makeup and priorities of the new government are. Anybody have a good article or podcast that goes into some detail (but not exhaustive) about this?
I can’t speak to the veracity on the ground as someone like Luke who lives in Deutschland could, but I thought this was a good overview.
Gambia uses a unique voting system – marbles dropped into each candidate’s ballot drum – to avoid spoilt ballots in a nation with a high illiteracy rate.
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I was not aware that Australia used preferential voting for their elections, according to the wiki page they’ve been doing so since 1918 (or earlier in various locales)!
The less-good candidate won the election in South Korean by less than 1%. In a smaller country with much higher voter turnout percentage, you are seeing the same sort of polarization we are seeing in the US.
I’d be interested to see the demographic data from the election. Since the racial divide isn’t a significant factor, I’m guessing it’s going to be a division mostly based on wealth, gender, and age. If it’s age that would be a big deal since continued high turnout would presumably put the conservatives in a tough spot in the future since it’s not like they have some sort of electoral college nonsense. To no surprise, a lot of young men have been leaning conservative, which is not great.
Whoever wrote this Wikipedia did a great job.
Old but still true…
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In addition to news that Macron has defeated far-right candidate Le Pen in France, Slovenia also held an election today and the bad-party has been defeated significantly.
News article:
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Not good.
The results are not final, but the conservative party that’s held power for the last nine years is so far behind their leader (Scott Morrison) has thrown in the towel (figuratively and literally–he’s stepped down as party leader).
There was the 2nd and final round of elections for the French National Assembly this past Sunday. After the first round, when many candidates from Macron’s governing party (centrist, I think?) failed to advance to the final round turnout amongst those party voters dropped precipitously and as a result LePen’s far-right party went from having only 8 seats to winning 81!
https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1538608328179326979
This won’t cause the government / Presidency to change hands, but they are much less dominant and there will be more far-right MP’s around. Another example of how centrist voters just can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum to keep the far-right nutjobs out of government. Democracy, what a system…
Good opportunity squandered.
But since the previous vote passed, they are still going to replace the constitution. They just have to come up with one that the people will approve of. It took two years to prepare this one. I wonder if they can just keep trying ones that get rejected until enough old people die that they can get the votes to just approve this one.