Look into the sort of regular tracking I do - Ukraine

While there have not been many posts recently - its the summer and politicians worldwide tend to be "on break" - but I am always following politics.

As a sort of preview and look into how I work I want to share this simple graphic I made.

I took the 2014 Ukraine election and made notes on how well each party is doing - in terms of expected popular vote as per polls - compared to how well they did last time.

The People's Front is effectively dead in the polls, and their coalition partner, the President's Bloc, is polling at half what they took last time. This means the 21.82% of the vote they took in the last election has been reduced, roughly, by half. (To 10.9% in the most recent poll if you want to be specific)

The Pro-European Self Reliance party is set to see its halved, while the Pro-Russian Opposition Bloc is set to see their vote double. The Radical Party is roughly at the same level as last time, while Fatherland, lead by Yulia Tymoshenko is polling at three times their 2014 levels. The far-right Freedom party is level, while the Liberal and Pro-Europe Civil Position is at triple their former level of support.

A brand new party, lead by Mikheil Saakashvili, the former President of Georgia, is set to take somewhere around 6%-12% of the vote, or, for reference, between half and a third of the vote the unaffiliated People's Front took last time.

In summary, the "pro-europe" parties, last time, took roughly 64% of the vote VS 21% for the main others (Nationalists and Pro-Russians); while this time, they are set to take 44% vs 32% for the main others. Given these polls, the most likely outcome of the next election is a Tymoshenko victory (she leads presidential polls and has the entire year) and a pro-Europe and Pro-Tymoshenko majority in the Parliament.



I keep track of all sorts of countries like this. Greece may well elect ND to a majority but it will be close. Poland is shaping up to become a stable two-party system with PiS set to win the next election. The CDP in Japan has been able to shore up its position as the chief opposition. Other countries I'm following include Israel, Portugal, South Africa, Belgium, Sweden, Ireland, Australia, and Slovakia. The three most interesting countries right now are probably: Spain, where the Socialists are now in government, and the PP party has fallen behind C's in the polls; Germany, where we finally have a polled answer to what would happen if the CDU/CSU alliance were to ever end (it would be much better for the CSU than CDU) and Italy, where the regionalist Northern League now leads nationwide polls.