Thanks!
As far as I can tell, studying the opinion polls available on Wikipedia, mainly SPD?
I was rooting for Die Grüne, but they seem to have lost quite a bit of ground lately. Any suggestions as to why this might be the case?
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Campaign errors, mostly minor stuff in the great realm of things, but I guess it has contributed to the overall idea/impression in people that the Greens candidate just isn’t ready or competent enough to be chancellor.
That being said, I do think the polls a few months ago were a bit of an artifical sugar high for the Greens - the numbers right now would still be impressive for them.
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With three weeks to go to Germany’s election, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has resorted to dark insinuations that high-flying Social Democrat contender Olaf Scholz means to team up with radical socialists who will threaten Germany’s very security.
Sounds like something from Trump campaign. 
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Or the anti-Corbyn stuff we had in the UK.
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Specially in the context that AfD is running strong. 
Ironically AfD voters are making a left coalition more likely. But shhhh…don’t tell 'em. 
RIP Mark
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We are having the big one tomorrow. General Parliamentary Elections that is. Erna Solberg’s government will be in the past tense soon, as this has been clearly revealed by a long pattern of polls for a considerable time.
It will still be very exciting tomorrow. In our democracy, each county (basically the Election Districts are generally the historical old counties) has a number of mandates. There are 19 election districts and a total of 169 representatives to parliament are to be elected. Each election district has a number of mandates based on geographical size and population. So in some places a common result would be that Labour gets 2 and the Conservative Party 2 as a very basic example.
However, what makes the Norwegian system interesting are the equalation mandates. Every party that manages to get more than 4% of the General Vote, gets some of these. This means that for smaller parties, getting above 4% of the General Vote is the difference between maybe 0-2 representative in parliament to 11 ! Because the equalation mandates are split evenly on all parties who gets more than 4% of the General Vote based on overall size of vote on various parties, meaning that a result of more than 4% of the General Vote gives small parties a very real voice and impact, but if they are too small, their voice becomes negligible. This makes it also for interesting political coalitions at times.
In this election, the de facto government choice, is between incumbent Erna Solberg’s conservative coalition of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, Christian Democrats and the Progressive Party on one side, and Labour, the Agrarian Party and the Socialist Left Party on the other side. In between these, you also have the party Red, quite doctrinal leftists indeed (these will support a new government but will not be able to join it, though they don’t want that anyway due to too much camel swallowing). And then you have The Greens, seen as an outlier with one extremely dominating agenda in getting Co2 emissions down.
Jonas Gahr Støre, the Labour leader, will hope that he gets a parliamentary numerical superiority with the Agrarians and the Socialists. The Agrarians not so keen on the Socialists, hope for a 2 Party coalition with Labour though this is now seen as very unrealistic day dreaming. Highly likely they will need the Socialists to gain majority.
There are many interesting possible outcomes. Several smaller parties are fighting the 4% limit. The Red Party, the Liberal Party, the Christian Democrats, The Greens are all getting measured from 3.5 to cirka 6% on polls. So far Red, traditionally a party that many sympathise and like a bit but don’t want to vote (because they are dogmatic far leftists who are against NATO, EU and so on and so on, which makes them easier to like than to actually end up voting for) does it better than ever. It is truly good for them that they are around 6% on polls now since I suspect they will end up with a percent less than that on actual Election Day. The Greens are between 5 and 6 percent. Christian Democrats measured between 3.5 and 4.5 and so on.
Going to be a long night tomorrow and a terribly exciting day ! Obviously Norwegian media has been totally and completely dominated by the upcoming election for a long time.
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Gavin Newsome, the Governor of California is facing a recall election on Tuesday. The reason? There really isn’t one other than partisan disapproval of how he’s doing his job. There is no scandal (the French Laundry incident occurred after the petition had already been filed), it’s just a case of the losing team wanting a do over on an election they lost, and the rules being stupid enough to allow a small minority of people to make it happen. The other oddity is that the peculiar process for the recall election makes it actually easier for the Republicans to take the seat than it would be if the next scheduled election of 2026.
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Actually, the next gubernatorial election here would be next year, not 2026, which makes the whole thing even dumber and a bigger waste of money. Very unlikely Newsom will lose the recall.
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Jesus, you;re right. As I said though, the weird way its done makes it far easier for a minority supported candidate to win in the recall so it makes sense to pursue it now rather than in a standard election…if you’re think purely from a GOP strategic sense in which all decorum and respect for Democratic norms is ignored.
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Yeah, it’s a dumb law. If the governor breaks the law, investigate, indict and convict. Otherwise, we can afford to wait until next year.
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Can you share some local (but obviously English) links, I don’t like to hear about Norway from Guardian or CNN. Interestingly, one of our local news papers is running the news, weird.
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Here is a poll from today, by Kantar on behalf of TV 2.
Here is another from Norfakta on behalf of Nationen and Klassekampen:
Both of these are from the entire country.
Here is another one from Analyse for Verdens Gang, this time only for Oslo (which has the biggest Election District and thus direct mandates) :
To explain the Party abbreviations and colour codes:
R is Rødt, Marxist-Leninists with a very modern touch. SV is the Socialist Left party. Socialists with social economics and the environment on the top agenda. MDG- The Greens. Independent of any coalitions, this party will support whoever wants to cut most Co2 emissions, which is frankly their ultimatum agenda that they won’t trade on. SP is the Agrarian Party. Top Agenda for them are policies for development of rural areas and farming. Strongly against centralisation. V is Venstre, the Liberal Party. Pretty standard European liberals really. KRF is the Christian Democrats. Social conservative liberals. H is the conservative Party. FRP is the Progressive Party, our far right party of note (mix of liberals and nationalists). A is andre, or Others. Tiny parties, or in the case of the far right nationalist party called the Democrats (who may get 1 representative, a previous guy, Vidar Kleppe, excluded for being too extreme by the Progressive Party).
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It’s a bit tricky, not much Norwegian news are on English so I would have to translate.
You have of course the Local. But it is very rudimentary with no actual commentary and very basic. I think it is read mostly by Norwegian-Americans. And it is super rudimentary.
Aftenposten, one of Norways oldest and biggest newspaper, used to have it’s news on also English. But it was not read enough and costs were cut so they don’t do it anymore except on massive stuff like terror attacks, in which case all major Norwegian papers tends to run a few stories on English. But normally, everything is in Norwegian.
Here maybe you can find something. Not seen this before, but appears to be actually very current news and up to date. No idea on the quality of the journalism.
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When are you expecting the results @Magnus
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No idea about the policies or politics but gratifying to see the reds leading the rest. Hopefully they hold off the blues and win the title.
Obviously, this doesn’t translate so well to UK politics…
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we have started early pollings for the election this month. crucial time for Canada to get rid of a corrupt liberal who should have been charged numerous times while in office for scandals.
if the illegitimate child of Castro gets elected again, I’ll be looking for a new country to live in.
