By-elections

The by-elections today, federally, in Canada, are still counting ballots. As such none of these results are final. Additionally, its quite likely that the exact percentages will change, but here are the results as of now. Keep in mind that the advance polls don't seem to be in yet, and, hopefully, when they are, turnout will spike.

BURNABY SOUTH (196 of 196) 30% turnout
39% - NDP (+4%) - Singh
26% - LIB (-8%)
23% - CPC (-4%)
11% - PPC (+11%)

YORK--SIMCOE (136 of 136) 20% turnout
54% - CPC (+4%)
29% - LIB (-7%)
8% - NDP (-1%)
4% - PC (+4%) - Baxter
3% - GRN (+-0%)
2% - PPC (+2%)

OUTREMONT (170 of 170) 21% turnout
40% - LIB (+6%)
26% - NDP (-18%)
13% - GRN (+9%)
11% - BQ (+3%)
7% - CPC (-3%)
2% - PPC (+2%)

Singh, the NDP leader, has won his by-election. As I mentioned in my earlier post, that's all that matters tonight. The PPC result in Burnaby is unimportant, as is the NDP result in Outremont. The former does not indicate PPC strength in BC, nor does the latter indicate NDP weakness in Quebec.

Interestingly, Dorian Baxter, the PC candidate, took 4th in York-Simcoe. This white immigrant from Kenya has run for the party before, and is a well known elvis impersonator, and serves as the pastor for the Christ the King Graceland Independent Anglican Church of Canada in Newmarket, which neighbours the riding.


updated with final results

Quick post on Singh and Burnaby South

Apologies in that I did not have the free time I planned to today; but wanted to simply say that Singh needs to win this by-election

The results should be available here when the polls close

regardless, right now, all signs point to him winning.

Singh needs to win. If the NDP somehow wins Outremont that is also notable. Also notable is if the Liberals somehow win York-Simcoe. Very notable would be if the Greens, Peoples Party, or some other small party wins any of these.

What will not be notable or of any importance is things like how close the Liberals came to winning in Burnaby; the Peoples Party finishing second, even if in all 3 by-elections; how poorly the NDP does in Outremont or how poorly the Liberals do in York-Simcoe; and so on.

Updates; all the 'other' countries

Lets start small and work our way up to the bigger stories.

Here at home, Jagmeet Singh, NDP leader, faces a by-election tomorrow. I will detail the risks in a post tomorrow, but suffice it to say that if he loses, he's done as leader.



In Poland a new party, Wiosna (spring) has been formed; but it threatens to unbalance the '2 party' balance that had been developing there.



Italy continues its existing trends. I will let you know when M5S has fallen close enough to PD to signify a change.



In Germany the SPD is bouncing back towards second place, currently held by the Greens.



New Zealand's governing Labour party is doing well in the polls and could even eke out a majority pending their exact support levels.



Ukraine remains a place to watch; Zelensky seems to have the edge at this time.



United Russia has still yet to bounce back. Math suggests they'd still win 275 seats, compared to 95 Communists, 55 Nationalists, and 25 for Just Russia.



Labor retains a lead in Australia, but its slowly shrinking.



Finland remains interesting. The government is a coalition of KESK, KOK, and PS, or, was at foundation. At the time the three parties held a combined 57% of the vote. Since then, PS was removed from the coalition and a splinter party of theirs, SIN, has retained its cabinet seats. In the latest polls, the 3 coalition parties sit at 34.3%. Even if PS were added to that, it would not reach 50%.



Today there are some interesting votes going on. Okinawa held a referendum, which due to Japan being so far east of me (on the other side of the date line) we know the results of; the "no" side won, which indicated opposition to the US military base in the area.

Additionally, there is a referendum in Cuba, and local elections in part of Italy (Sardinia), alongside elections in Moldova and Senegal. Nigeria voted yesterday but results are not yet available, and the British Virgin Islands votes tomorrow, with Chicago going to the polls on Tuesday.

More on Israel

A projection update, but also a few more notes on nomenclature.

The parties that are running on a united list with Jewish Home are officially not known as the "Jewish Home List" and are running as the overly long "Union of Right-Wing Parties". I will call them simply the "Union".

As such I present the updated projection:

35 - Blue & White
29 - Likud
9 - Arab Opposition
7 - Labour
7 - UTJ
6 - Union
6 - Right
5 - Shas
4 - Yisrael Beiteinu
4 - Meretz
4 - Kulanu*
4 - Arab List*
0 - Gesher*
0 - Zehut*


* = danger of not meeting the threshold

Adding in the most logical single coalition partner, Gantz has 42 to Bibi's 35, but the latter has better relations with the more religious parties, which could bring him up to 47.

Interestingly, Blue & White plus Likud would have a majority; but Blue & White opposes Netanyahu; however should Likud decide he is more trouble than he is worth, it could lead to an interesting situation.

Deadline day brings final Israeli realignment

The candidate deadline in Israel, technically still an hour away, has brought a major re-alignment to the parties competing in this election.

Lets start with the Arab parties.

The Joint List has broken. Joining with Ahmad Tibi and his Ta'al party is Hadash, the Communists. The two share an somewhat anti-zionist view. On the other side are Balad and Ra'am. While these parties are not exactly "zionist" they do not oppose zionism as stringently. Considering that a majority of Arab voters would like to see an Arab party in government, but that Tibi himself seems to be the most popular Israeli Arab politician at this time, it will be an interesting election to see which 'side' does better.

When it comes to nomenclature, I've decided the two names I will use are the "Arab Opposition" for Ta'al and Hadash, representing their unwillingness to join even a left-wing government, and the "Arab List", as Ra'am's official name is still the "United Arab List", and Ra'am and Balad are the rump of what's left of the Joint List.

Next, we go to perhaps the bigger change, the union of Benny Gantz's Hosen L'Yisrael and Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid into the new "Blue & White" list. The alliance includes a deal to rotate the Premiership, meaning first Gantz, and then Lapid, would serve 2 years as PM.

I won't be updating the projection today as these changes are far too fresh to have been properly polled; but spot polls show Blue and White beating Likud by 36 to 30, 36 to 26, or 35 to 32, pending on the pollster.

Updates; UK and Israel

The split finally happened in the UK, but it was smaller than expected. 7 Labour MPs quit the party to form "The Independent Group" or TIG. They were later joined by an 8th Labour MP.

This morning, 3 Conservative MPs have left their party to join TIG.

Having members from both sides will help to bolster the force as a new centrist group, but TIG is explicitly not a party. I will continue to monitor the situation.




Meanwhile in Israel, Tzipi Livni's career in politics is over, at least for now. After failing to merge into Gantz's Hosen L'Yisrael, she has thrown in the towel and withdrawn her party, Hatnuah, from the election. This will free up some much needed votes from the 1% or 2% of Israelis who were backing the party.

Jewish Home meanwhile have announced their plan to run as a single list with the parties Yachad, Otzma Yehudit, and Tkuma. Tkuma had run with the party in the last election and has two MKs. Otzma and Yachad ran on a single list in 2015 but narrowly failed to meet the threshold. Both parties contain Kahanist factions, which want a one state solution where non-jews have no voting rights. It is likely with this backing the party will, in fact, pass the threshold in the election.

UK drama tomorrow? plus update in Spain.

UK:
There are some rumors that the UK Labour Party may face some drama tomorrow over a possible split similar to the one seen in the 1981 when the SDP broke away from Labour. So far things remain very unclear, but expect possible movement here sooner rather than later.


SPAIN:
The right still hold a majority but its getting mighty narrow as PSOE (the socialist government) has risen in the polls.

Spain election; Italy, Israel, and more!

First, quick commentary on Italy, and the recent media stories about M5S taking their "lowest polling numbers" in ages.

LN - the Green line, and M5S, the yellow line, are in coalition. A key reason for the coalition is their inability to get into a coalition with anyone else. FI, the blue line, was in an alliance with LN, but LN+FI does not equal a majority of seats. PD is the red line, and while M5S had somewhat considered a possible coalition with them, their policies also have some differences.

Bluntly, until the gap between PD and M5S gets smaller, nothing has actually "changed"




SPAIN:

A snap election has been called.

You can see the full polling data here. Long story short is that a PP+C government backed by Vox would have a majority of seats, or, so close to a majority of seats that it would be very easy to get smaller parties to back them. As such, they are in the drivers seat.




ISRAEL:

You can see the polling data I use for my projections here. One reason why I don't feel any need to hide this data (IE, 'if I can get the numbers myself, why should I bother reading your website') is that I see things people can often miss. Take for example the two polls, in the 14th of Feb and 31st of Jan, that show Zehut, the Libertarian Party, winning seats. Both of them are by the same polling group. In particular, this particular 4-group alliance that released the poll; Maagar Mochot/i24News/Israel Hayom, has not done any other polling; though elements of the group, working with other elements of the group, have in the past.

This puts up all sorts of red flags for me, and tells me to be suspicious of these polls.

Compare that with Jewish Home sometimes being above and sometimes being below the threshold, which is something a wide range of pollsters agree with (many showing both at different times)




POLAND:

I am keeping an eye on a new party that has formed here this year.




INDIA:

The sitting government has been lagging in the polls; recent events may change this.

Spain and Israel

Spain could be headed to a snap election after Catalonian parties have withdrawn support from the government.

I made a projection based on poll averages 2 weeks ago, I now present those numbers grouped:

89 PP
67 C's
right: 156

95 PSOE
49 Podemos
left: 144

others:
25 VOX
11 ERC
6 PNV
5 PDeCAT
3 Others

In short, with support from VOX, the right could easily govern.



In Israel meanwhile I've decided to do another massive poll average.

As you can see I've had to deal with threshold issues again.

I've done this by putting any party I don't think will make the mark by the election date at 0, and upping any party I think will to a minimum of 4 seats in each poll. I then averaged the result; which is as follows:

33 Likud
23 Hosen
11 Yesh Atid
8 New Right
7 UTJ
6 Ta'al
6 Joint List
6 Labour
5 Meretz
5 Yisrael Beiteinu
5 Kulanu
5 Shas

Dennis King, PEI PC leader

Dennis King has won the PEI PC leadership. The problem (from the standpoint of "everything is continuing as it was the last time I posted about it on this blog, nothing has changed") is what King stands for.

To quote:



"The system is broken.There is a lack of trust.People are disillusioned about politics."

"We need to loosen the partisan grip on our democratic institutions."

"We want to preserve and protect our Island for future generations."

"We need to achieve a carbon-neutral society. We need to set hard targets of consuming a fixed percentage of our energy from renewable sources, and we need to make those targets binding."

"We need to be guided by the principle that government must be open, accountable and transparent with Islanders. This is their province, this is their information and this is their money."



In short; the Green Party might have some trouble staying where it is in the polls.

I will update the situation at the next poll; but that may be months from now.

General updates

Nothing much has 'changed' that I've been following, existing trends are simply continuing to play out. Perhaps the biggest 'change' is DiMaio's support of the Yellow Vests; it helps perhaps put into perspective exactly what M5S stands for; but given that there are likely some readers who don't know who DiMaio, M5S, or possibly even the Yellow Vests are, you can see why I don't dwell on it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I've learned in the past week has to do with Mark Latham.

The 2005 Australian election was the first Australian election I followed live; and Mark Latham was the Labor leader at the time. His "handshake" always struck me as very very odd. I couldn't put my finger on it but in the 'age of Trump' it becomes more clear that his actions seemed something a right-leaning leader would do, not a left-leaning one.

As such perhaps it then makes some sense to find out that Latham has not only left Labor behind, but has joined One Nation, the neo-nationalist "Trumpish" party in Australia.

He is running for the state Senate in New South Wales. He's also become the leader of the state party.