General updates; Alberta, PEI, and more.

Israel: The trend noted in my last post, that of Blue and White falling to Likud levels or below continues. Likud itself may even be up by a seat or two. We've also finally had some polls where all parties that might make the threshold, have made the threshold. Two of them in fact. I will include the averages of such polls in my next Israel post.



Spain: The right is inching ever closer to the magic number needed for a majority, and the current trends suggest they'll reach it shortly.



Italy: The bottom has fallen out from under M5S and they've dropped to PD levels. This comes as Lega numbers are stable, causing a drop for the combined support for the governing parties. The main impact of this trend is the increasing likelihood that in the next election, the League and its jr ally, the various Conservative parties (Berlusconi leads the main one) could win a majority.



Ukraine: Zelensky will make the second round according to all polling, the only question is who joins him. Tymoshenko seems most likely, but Poroshenko may end up doing so instead, and there's even a extraordinarily slim chance Boyko could. Regardless of who does, Zelensky looks set to win the second round as well.



Alberta: The election has been called in the province and will take place on April 16th. I will, of course, be covering the election in depth. Current polls, which are a few days hold, have the UCP with a 10 to 20 point lead; but given recent scandals and the tendency of the NDP to jump in Alberta polls at a writ drop, I would not be surprised to see the NDP and UCP tied, or near tied, in polls that come out in the next few days. What really matters is how the other parties will do, as the only reasonable way the NDP wins this election is if the smaller parties have a larger share of the vote.



PEI: No official election call yet, but yes, I'm keeping an eye on things. I grew up on PEI, and understand some of the nuances of its politics. Polls by their nature can be inaccurate in such a small place. Regardless, polls show that the Greens are leading. PEI has never had more than 3 members of the legislature at any one time that have sat outside the Government and Official Opposition caucuses; now is one such time as there are two Green members and one Independent. It is all but certain that each of the 3 parties will elect at least 4 MLAs in the election, making a first for PEI. It's also likely that the winning party, whomever that turns out to be, will have under 50% of the seats, also something that has never happened on PEI (1890 saw the two parties tie in seat count, meaning each took 50% of the seats) Once there is an official call, I will start regular updates about PEI.