Update - October

Catalonia is "voting" today; at least where the police are not smashing down doors to grab ballot boxes. It's safe to say regardless of the result, few will view it as legitimate.


The NDP is voting as well. Mathematically, given the controversial stances of some candidates, the best result for the NDP may be 33.4% of the vote for both Angus and Singh, and 16.6% for Ashton and Caron. Don't get me wrong, I like Caron and would be tempted to vote NDP if he were leader, but I don't think he is appealing to the wider party, and Ashton turns people away due to her far left stances. If both were dropped on this ballot and the race became head to head between Singh and Angus, I think it would serve the NDP well.


There are a number of elections that I simply won't be following. Portugal's municipal elections today, for example, or the local and regional votes and referenda in Luxembourg, Austria, Venezuela, Italy, Kosovo, and the Philippines. It is also unlikely I will follow national elections in Liberia, Kyrgyzstan, Slovenia, or Kenya, mostly due to them either having unstable democracies, or, being for positions without much real power.


On the 15th Austria votes in Parliamentary elections. The Conservatives appear set for a win, with their new leadership being rather popular. They've pushed both the Socialists and the Nationalists down in the polls. Austria has a strong and long history of Conservative-Socialist coalition government, and that is likely to continue.


On the same day is regional (AKA provincial) elections in Lower Saxony in Germany, where electors will send members to the legislature in Hanover. In the federal election, the CDU took 35%, and the Greens 9%. Both parties are polling at the same numbers provincially, but Die Linke took 7% federally and is only at 5% at the state level, while the FDP took 9% and is at 8%. AfD, which I'm keeping an eye on was at 9% but is polling at 6%. The big gain is for the SPD which only took 27% of the vote here last week, but is sitting on 34% of the vote for the Landtag.


Czechia, formerly known as the Czech Republic, votes on the 20th and 21st. ANO2011 is the leading party in the polls. The party is interesting as it is probably the closest analogy to the Liberal Party of Canada in the world, being big-tent, pragmatic, and willing to use working ideas from across the spectrum.


On the 22nd is the election in Japan, which is still fluid. I've decided to report the entire alliance which the opposition Democrats is participating in as DP, or the Democratic Party. While not entirely accurate, it helps with understanding and simplicity. I've also gone over some historic results to help me understand the results of this coming election, as such I have a projection update:

245 LDP
30 NKP
265 GOV

150 DP
25 JCP
15 OTH

While this still gives the LDP a majority of their own, the DP becomes a very strong opposition force and one that will need to be dealt with properly if the LDP plans to continue winning elections. Part of the reason the DP has gained so much since my last projection is the system Japan uses, Parallel. A 5% change in vote will only gain you 5% of those proportional seats. The DP's alliance partner has done very well in Tokyo and I project 20 'ridings' that they can win, hence the sudden jump. Add to that the new poll that shows the DP at 18% "approval" (which translates into around 38% at the polls) and you begin to see where the remainder of the gain comes from.


On the same day is elections in Argentina. I'm not certain I'll cover these fully. Argentina is still a somewhat "new" democracy, only a few decades of stable democratic rule, and its parties are still somewhat fluid making a quality analysis difficult. Additionally, many countries that do not speak english have data that is hard to find; while in cases like Japan I can reference history to help me understand things, with newer democracies this is all the more difficult.


Lastly on the 28th is the election in Iceland which I plan to do a full post about in the coming days.