French and Slovene elections

 Sorry for the late update; but regardless.

Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent President of France, has won re-election, with 58.5% of the vote vs his opponent Marine Le Pen, who took 41.5%. I want to examine this further, and will do so, in a future post about the upcoming legislative elections.

In Slovenia, a brand new pro-europe liberal party has won the elections, taking 41 of the 90 seats. In doing so, they've pushed all the other liberal parties out of the legislature. In the last legislature, the various liberal parties had 33 seats. The results are as follows:

41 - GS - 34.5% - Liberal, pro-europe (gain of 41 seats)
27 - SDS - 23.5% - Nationalist, anti-europe (gain of 2 seats)
8 - NSI - 6.9% - Christian Democrats, pro-europe (gain of 1 seat)
7 - SD - 6.7% - Social Democrat, pro-europe (loss of 3 seats)
5 - L - 4.4% - Socialist, anti-europe (loss of 4 seats)

The most likely coalition is between GS and SD. However, I personally would not rule out one between GS and NSI. NSI however may be tainted by being in the incumbent coalition. 

20APR2022 updates

 Nothing much new to update on. The final two French presidential candidates are the two that were expected, and the polls continue to say it is very roughly a 55-45 split. 

On the 24th, france will elect a president. 

On the same day, Slovenia votes. A new small-l liberal party is doing well in the polls.

In Italy, the Progressive Democrats (PD) and the far-right Brothers of Italy (FdI) are battling it out for the polling lead, with both parties at roughly 21.5%

FdI has potential allies. Lega is averaging about 17%. FI has about 8%. A newish party, pushing for Italy to leave the EU, has about 2% support. Combined this is roughly 48.5% for the right.

PD has potential allies as well, especially among smaller parties. Together, these 6 small parties, take roughly 13% of the vote. M5S may also sit with them, they are polling at about 13%. This puts the left on 47.5% of the vote. 

The left, however, has many more "working parts" to function. IE more parties, and parties that are further apart. 

Other upcoming elections:

May 5th, UK locals

May 8th, Schleswig-Holstein

May 9th, Philippines

May 15, North Rhine-Westphalia

May 15, Lebanon

May 18th, the UCP leadership review ballot in Alberta will be published. 

May 21st, Australia

June 2nd, Ontario election

Israeli government may fall; and more on Serbia

 A member of Yamina, PM Bennet's own party, has quit the coalition government. Idit Silman, who was the chairwoman of the governing coalition, will now sit with the opposition. This will mean the government loses its majority, and as such, may well fall. 

Should the government collapse and the parliament be dissolved, Lapid will become Prime Minister. I still think Lapid will never see the PM's chair during this term of Parliament, so I do not see this as likely. 

Gantz may jump to Bibi and put him back in office, either with Gantz as PM, or with Netanyahu returning.

I really don't see any other options beyond simply delaying things. IE instead of collapsing today, the government may collapse in May, or December. 

The last 5 polls show Bibi's opposition coalition, which won 52 seats last election, would win 58, 59, 57, 60, or 58 seats in a new election. 61 being needed for a majority. Alongside them would be between 4 and 7 members of Yamina, some, or most of whom, may be convinced to sit with Bibi. 

In Serbia, the government has failed to win a majority in Parliament. They would have needed 126 seats, and ended up winning only 120. There are many potential coalition partners; but if an agreement can be hammered out is another question. There is only one truly pro-west possibility, the green party "We Must", but, they have previously labeled Vucic (President and leader of the governing party) an authoritarian, and may be unwilling to sit with him. The main opposition, united serbia, would similarly have difficulty making an about-face to sit with the government. 

SPS is a potential option. They are the successor to Tito ad Milosevic's communist parties. The party is currently pro-EU. They were already in the pre-election government coalition. The only other options are two monarchist parties, or the new Oathkeepers party, a far right party. 

Hungary election results

I've got some better more detailed results for the Hungarian election. I've broken out the results for the opposition. The numbers show the seats won via the list + the constituencies won = the total seats won.

DK - 12 + 4 = 16 (+7)
MM - 6 + 4 = 10 (+10)
Jobbik - 9 + 0 = 9 (-8)
MSZP - 5 + 4 = 9 (-4)
PM - 3 + 4 = 7 (+2)
LMP - 3 + 2 = 5 (+-0)

Wikipedia has different numbers, however, I've added this up myself. It's possible I've made errors. 

The reason this result is so shocking is the polls.

The government's polling numbers in the 5 polls before the election were; 49%, 47%, 50%, 50%, and 49.3%. And the opposition 41%, 47%, 40%, 40%, and 46.5%. 

The final results were 53.1% for the government and 35.0% for the opposition. 

I expect this opposition coalition may well break up soon, I'll keep an eye on things as usual. 

Elections in Hungary, and Serbia.

 In Hungary, the united opposition seems to have performed laughably bad. They've managed to gain 4 seats, going up from 52 to 56, while the government has gained 2 seats, going up from 133 to 135. The opposition may have taken as little as 35% of the vote. A far right party may have taken 7 seats. At this time, I don't know to whom the final seat has gone. The referendums however, seem to have failed. While all have taken over 90% of the vote cast, only 45% of voters cast ballots; which would render the results invalid. 

In Serbia, only half of the vote is counted, but the government seems to have won a majority, or, a minority that's only a few seats short (meaning a coalition would be relatively easy to form). Results will not be released until tomorrow. The President, who is of the government's party, however, has clearly been re-elected and has already declared victory. 

Ce blog deviendra uniquement français

Dès aujourd'hui, 1er avril, j'annonce que ce blog passe de la couverture en anglais à couverture uniquement en français. À partir d'aujourd'hui, 1er avril, vous trouverez toute la meuilleure couverture de la politique du monde entier. En date du 1er avril