patrick.net

Rooting for UKIP.

mell says

Rooting for UKIP.

UKIP might be the biggest victim of the "first past the post" aka "Winner take all" Election System. They captured almost a million UK votes in 2010, yet did not gain one seat. They look to be capturing a lot more of the popular vote this time around, and may get one whole seat.

The empty squares are the number of seats that would be held if the Popular Vote was Proportioned into Seats; The filled boxes outside the ring are the overallocation of seats due to lack of a Proportional Vote.

More at:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/05/britain-s-election-2015-seats-votes-calculator

The Good News: Nick Clegg's sellout party got a drubbing it may never recover from.

thunderlips11 says

Spain

Real close between Partido Popular and PSOE. However, there's spoilers, two new parties called Podemos ("We can") and Ciudadanos ("Citizens"), which between the two are now polling more than a third of the electorate.

Be interesting to see if Pablo Iglesias Turrión stands for election with Podemos or stands for the 2015 Catalonian election. Catalonia it the elephant in the room of all Spanish politics at this point. I personally would love to see Catalonia go independent then opt for a Andorra like out of the EU low tax, low key government. I would move there in a heartbeat if that happened. I had serious plans to retire to Andorra but they upped the ante from 50k to 400k for residency. All the idiot expat buy my book bloggers, pedicord/sovereign man/il etc., ruined that one.

Not really a surprise that the Tories won. The banksters control Britain even more than they do in the US, if that's possible.

finehoe says

Not really a surprise that the Tories won. The banksters control Britain even more than they do in the US, if that's possible.

I blame Labour for "Me Too, But" campaigning, aka "We're for Austerity, but with less calories". Nobody likes a vacillating wimp.

SNP cleaned up in Scotland, and they ran on a naked anti-Austerity message without the "No hurt feelz on the internetz, no CGI virtual twerking by pixelated bikini "Girls" on Race Car video games, Fat Shaming is the biggest problem facing Britain today, but never mind controlling the Banks or renationalizing the Railways even though 75% of Britons support it, even a plurality of hardcore Tories" Social Justice Warrior wing lecturing.

Just like the Dems.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/ed-miliband-to-resign-as-labour-leader

I say SNP runs in England in 2020.

bob2356 says

All the idiot expat buy my book bloggers, pedicord/sovereign man/il etc., ruined that one.

Yeah. I hear Sovereign Man is full of crap, according to the Rumor Mill.

http://news.yahoo.com/uks-cameron-poised-return-power-labour-routed-scotland-014734115--business.html

With all results declared in the 650-seat house, the Conservatives held 331 and Labour 232. The center-left Liberal Democrats, who supported Cameron in government since 2010, were all but wiped out, reduced to eight seats from 57.

The anti-EU, populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) surged into third place in the overall vote tally, but disappointed its followers by managing to place first in only one district to win just a single seat.

thunderlips11 says

bob2356 says

All the idiot expat buy my book bloggers, pedicord/sovereign man/il etc., ruined that one.

Yeah. I hear Sovereign Man is full of crap, according to the Rumor Mill.

It's worth an occasional read as long as you don't mind serious paranoia mixed in with some decent information. The thing that annoys me is he's always trying to sell fairly high tax places like Chile (top individual rate 40%) where he doesn't stay long enough to pay local taxes himself. Like all the rest of the expat crap if you sign up for the newsletter you get inundated with buy from me emails.

Socialist Party of Japan coalitioned with the conservative party in 1994-95 to evict the centrist coalition, and that eventually destroyed the JSP as a political force in the country.

Lib-Dems in the UK did the same damn thing to themselves 20 years later.

In the late 1950s the JSP were winning 1/3 the seats in the Diet, now they're down to 6.

Wish I'd come across J.S. Mills 'it is not the case that all conservatives are stupid people, but all stupid people are conservative' formulation earlier in life, it explains so much.

zzyzzx says

The anti-EU, populist UK Independence Party (UKIP) surged into third place in the overall vote tally, but disappointed its followers by managing to place first in only one district to win just a single seat.

That's the first-post-the-post/winner-take-all system for you. UKIP became the third largest party in Britain with millions of votes, and didn't garner one single seat. If there was one of several kinds of Proportional System, they would have had had 42-80 out of 650, making them a power player.

It also would have shook Labour awake, if the neoliberals in control of it were actually interested in winning.

And UKIP would have kept Cameron honest with his BS EU referendum pledge. Cameron's gonna make it so it's "Should we move forward with the EU by approving Schlegen(sp?) Treaty, or Maintain the current relationship?" instead of making it a Yes or No on the EU.

Anyway, big win for SNP.

Bellingham Bill says

Lib-Dems in the UK did the same damn thing to themselves 20 years later.

In the late 1950s the JSP were winning 1/3 the seats in the Diet, now they're down to 6.

Yep, Clegg probably destroyed the Lib-Dems forever. Just like Labour's "Austerity Lite, and Nag you about Internet Porn and Let's Celebrate Vagina Day" platform didn't create Enthusiasm.

Poland moving to the right as well:
http://news.yahoo.com/polish-president-seeks-reform-poor-electoral-showing-080716319.html