EU Elections Thread

[Derec]

So I've been looking at the results from Spiegel Online (alas, in German). First thing I noticed in their interactive map is that there has been a definite left-wing shift. In 2009 most countries are colored "blue" meaning their member party of the "European People's Party" alliance had won the plurality of the votes/seats. UK and Czech Rep. also had conservative which are not members of EPP on top (i.e. Torries are not allied with the likes of German C?U). Netherlands and Estonia had (classical) liberal blocks on top and only Denmark was painted red for social democratic block.
In 2014 there is a lot more red - Italy, Portugal, Romania, Sweden. Greece is painted purple for the 'Coalition of the Radical Left' or Syriza. In Sweden, the second place went to the Greens and even the radfem "Feminist Initiative" managed to win 7% of the vote. So it's not only right-wing radicals who are surging.

 

[dx713]

Sourced from the Guardian.

The far right anti-EU National Front was forecast to win a European parliament election in France, topping a nationwide ballot for the first time in a stunning advance for opponents of European integration.

Critics of the European Union, riding a wave of anger over austerity and mass unemployment, gained ground elsewhere but in Germany, the EU's biggest member state, the pro-European centre ground held firm, according to exit polls.

In France, Marine Le Pen's nationalist movement which blames Brussels for everything from immigration to job losses, was set to take about 25 percent of the vote, comfortably ahead of the conservative opposition UMP on about 21 percent.

That analysis is too fast when it comes to France.
Polls show that while the average mainstream French voter chose his bulletin for European issues, even sometime choosing a party they don't like domestically, the average FN voter chose according to domestic issues.

 

[Jokodo]

Reports say that in the Netherlands the CDA gets 5 seats with 15.0% while D66 gets only 4 seats with 15.4%. How does that work? I thought the Netherlands had a single vote proportional system, not some kind of preferential voting system? (The percentaages and seats also don't line up for Ireland, but at least I know they have preferential voting and have split the country into several constituencies).

 

[Archimedes]

I voted today. The usual list of familair parties plus lots of tiny anti-europe parties. The ballot ended up being so long it flowed out of the booth and onto the floor while I was holding the top end.

One advantage with FPTP voting is that no matter how large the paper, you need only mark one box. Over here, every box on the paper has to be numbered for your vote to count - except in Federal Senate elections, where you can mark a single box for a party list if you wish; although you still have the option to number every box (and there are typically around a hundred boxes).

Here in Ireland we have STV voting but you're not obliged to fill out every single box on the paper which seems a strange thing to be forced to do. That way if there's only 1 or 2 or 5 or whatever out of the list of couple of dozen candidates you give a shit about, you give them your order of preference and ignore everyone else on the ballot. I'll be fucked if I'm going to give any preferences to the likes of Sinn Féin.

 

[angelo]

Latest snippet I have here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/26/far-right-europe-election_n_5391873.html?ir=WorldPost

 

[Canard DuJour]

View attachment 339​

When I saw that ad up on billboards I thought of this;

Right, that's an almost funny sendup of UKIP fear-mongering.

To be clear, however, IMO mass-immigration isn't just good (or bad) for "the economy," but creates winners and losers. Dunno about thieving Romanians, but the last wave of Polish, ex-Yugoslavian etc contract labour into Britain was of hard-working, well-trained plumbers, electricians, welders etc. Not just catering and cleaning workers. They can accept less than equally hard-working, well-trained Brits need to support families because of the difference in currency values. Fewer pounds go further in Poland or Croatia and said workers are mostly here to take or send money home.

Can't blame them for that, but you can blame Labour for pretending it doesn't create problems for its traditional constituency.

 

[dystopian]

Reports say that in the Netherlands the CDA gets 5 seats with 15.0% while D66 gets only 4 seats with 15.4%. How does that work? I thought the Netherlands had a single vote proportional system, not some kind of preferential voting system? (The percentaages and seats also don't line up for Ireland, but at least I know they have preferential voting and have split the country into several constituencies).

Yeah, this confused me too. I don't know what the english word for it is, but after the distribution of seats based on votes there can be remaining empty seats. To start with, the vote divider is determined by the total number of valid votes cast divided by the number of seats to be distributed. The number of votes a party received is divided by the vote divider and rounded down, resulting in the number of seats they gain. Because the election threshhold is the same as the vote divider, seats can remain that need to be divided (so called 'rest seats', and they go to the biggest party. Which you would *think* is D66, but here comes a peculiarity of Dutch politics to screw up your assumption. Dutch parties can; within the same electoral district; create alliances where they agree to divide any such rest seats among themselves. These alliances are considered to be a single party for the purposes of dividing rest seats. That's why the CDA gained more seats than D66.

 

[crispy]

Reports say that in the Netherlands the CDA gets 5 seats with 15.0% while D66 gets only 4 seats with 15.4%. How does that work? I thought the Netherlands had a single vote proportional system, not some kind of preferential voting system? (The percentaages and seats also don't line up for Ireland, but at least I know they have preferential voting and have split the country into several constituencies).

Yeah, this confused me too. I don't know what the english word for it is, but after the distribution of seats based on votes there can be remaining empty seats. To start with, the vote divider is determined by the total number of valid votes cast divided by the number of seats to be distributed. The number of votes a party received is divided by the vote divider and rounded down, resulting in the number of seats they gain. Because the election threshhold is the same as the vote divider, seats can remain that need to be divided (so called 'rest seats', and they go to the biggest party. Which you would *think* is D66, but here comes a peculiarity of Dutch politics to screw up your assumption. Dutch parties can; within the same electoral district; create alliances where they agree to divide any such rest seats among themselves. These alliances are considered to be a single party for the purposes of dividing rest seats. That's why the CDA gained more seats than D66.

Just to add, this system is in place to make it possible to have smaller political parties by making it possible to vote for a fringe party without 'wasting your vote' completely.

What I am still missing in this system though, is that blank votes, or even better, no voters 'votes' counts against the total number of seats to be distributed.

 

[dystopian]

What I am still missing in this system though, is that blank votes, or even better, no voters 'votes' counts against the total number of seats to be distributed.

In the Netherlands, blank votes are counted for the purposes of determining the voter turnout, but are deemed 'invalid' votes. Thus they don't have any influence on the distributed votes. Because they're invalid, they also don't have any influence on the election divider and thus no effect on the rest seats. Blank votes are considered symbolic protest votes.

 

[angelo]

The biggest problem is that votes elect politicians!

 

[lpetrich]

dystopian, the Dutch Parliament uses the  D'Hondt method, at least according to Wikipedia's contributors. It's a highest-averages method, and it works like this:

In each round of calculation, a sort of average number of votes is calculated for each party, and calculated in this fashion:
(party's votes)/((party's seats) + 1)

Various alternatives use somewhat different denominators, but for a large number of seats, they all have the limit
(# seats) + constant

The party with the highest average gets a seat, and the rounds continue until all the seats are allocated.

dystopian, it's not clear from your description, but does the Dutch Parliament sometimes have a problem with unallocated seats?

 

[angelo]

The way it works here, in the senate votes at least, is a party has say, 3 candidates running, if that party gets say 35% first preference of the vote but only needs 30% of the vote to get all three candidates elected, the 5% surplus goes to a candidate that's preferenced before hand by the party hierarchy. This way leaving plenty of scope for corruption. It also gets some one policy nut job elected to the senate with less than 2-3% of first preference votes.

 

[dystopian]

dystopian, the Dutch Parliament uses the  D'Hondt method, at least according to Wikipedia's contributors. It's a highest-averages method, and it works like this:

In each round of calculation, a sort of average number of votes is calculated for each party, and calculated in this fashion:
(party's votes)/((party's seats) + 1)

Various alternatives use somewhat different denominators, but for a large number of seats, they all have the limit
(# seats) + constant

The party with the highest average gets a seat, and the rounds continue until all the seats are allocated.

dystopian, it's not clear from your description, but does the Dutch Parliament sometimes have a problem with unallocated seats?

*hiss*; get your math away from me! I hate math!

Anyway, it isn't really correct. The Hare Quota is used for the distribution of seats, D'Hondt method is only used for Rest Seats.

There aren't really any problems with unallocated seats that I'm aware of. The system we have makes sure there are no such seats; as they always get added to a party via the rest-seat system.

 

[lpetrich]

The Hare Quota is (number of votes) / (number of seats).

I've found this page on the subject of Election result | Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (Second Chamber of the States-General) at what looks like the English version of that parliament's official site.

One first calculates an electoral quota using the Hare Quota formula. A party must have at least (electoral quota) number of votes to get seats in that parliament. Each eligible party then gets this number of seats: (its number of votes) / (electoral quota) rounded down to an integer value. That value is always at least 1. Seats that are left unallocated are then divided among eligible parties using the d'Hondt method.

 

[angelo]

The Hare Quota is (number of votes) / (number of seats).

I've found this page on the subject of Election result | Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal (Second Chamber of the States-General) at what looks like the English version of that parliament's official site.

One first calculates an electoral quota using the Hare Quota formula. A party must have at least (electoral quota) number of votes to get seats in that parliament. Each eligible party then gets this number of seats: (its number of votes) / (electoral quota) rounded down to an integer value. That value is always at least 1. Seats that are left unallocated are then divided among eligible parties using the d'Hondt method.

Very similar to here, in the senate. But the house of reps where the government is made the system changes to a preferential voting system. The parties make backroom deals with each other as to decide which way their preferences go.
Two similar ideological parties can share their second preferences among each other to insure their preferred candidate gets elected. The system is just about as corrupt as a banana republic.