Winter Update

The 'winter' political season is upon us. Once the coming US elections are complete (and yes I'll be doing a post on them) worldwide politics will die down, in terms of news, for the winter season, as usual.

As such this post will contain a plethora of small items.



Hesse

An update here that I failed in my due diligence by not finding and reporting that the current government was that of the CDU and Greens. Since such a coalition has identical numbers to a CDU-SPD coalition, the things I said on the latter also apply to the former.




Upcoming Elections

Victoria

This Australian State votes near the end of the month. Polls suggest a Labor victory.




Keeping and Eye on

Japan

In my post about the election results last year I posted this image:

Based on an assumption the CDP would vacuum up the supporters of the old Democrat party. This has not happened. The current numbers in the house are as follows:

283 - LDP
29 - NKP
(312 GOV)
58 - CDP
37 - DPP (continuation of KNT-Democrat coalition)
13 - GI (Democrats in neither the DPP or CDP)
12 - JCP
11 - INO
24 - Oth

I still think in the longer term (next year or two) that the Group of Independents (GI) will merge itself into the CDP; but those extra 10 Democrats who stuck with the KNT as the DPP are not likely going anywhere.

What has changed is the upper house. At the time of the election the Democrats held 50 seats. 3 of them went on to sit with KNT.

In the new year, 6 of them left to sit as CDP councillors.

In May, the Democrats finally dissolved in the upper house. 24 joined the DPP and the remainder became Independents. Very shortly thereafter (the next day?) many of those who became Independent joined the CDP, bringing them up to 23. At the time the standings were as follows:   LDP 125,  NKP 25,  DPP 24,  CDP 23.

Finally in october, a DPP member switched to the CDP, making the CDP the largest opposition party in both houses.

In short, as I expected, the CDP would displace the DP as the main opposition party; but this would take a while.




Russia

I've been waiting for Putin's United Russia party to rebound in the polls after the drop due to pension reform, but this is not happening. Regardless, the current projection based on the current polls would see the following legislature elected:

285 - United Russia [loss of 58 seats]
80 - Communist Party [gain of 38 seats]
60 - Liberal Democrats (nationalist) [gain of 21 seats]
25 - Just Russia [gain of 2 seats]

Still an easy and decisive victory for Putin's party.




Stable Polls

Italy, Spain, Slovakia, Greece, Poland and Australia have all seen fairly stable polls for the last number of weeks and months.




New Brunswick

Lastly, those who follow me on twitter will have seen this tweet about the seating plan in the NB Legislature. Given that the plan is going to change with the new PC government being sworn in, I wonder if this odd set-up between the two smaller parties will continue.