World Elections/Politics 2022

[Jubal]

For the politics that doesn't have its own threads.

Europe saw two depressing election results yesterday: Vucic winning in Serbia and Orban in Hungary. Both cases saw governments will very heavy state media control beating attempts to unite opposition forces around compromise candidates, and both saw their countries thereby retain much more pro-Russian alignments. Hungary is as ever the more worrying case, because it's in the EU, and having it there frequently now stops the rest of the EU from acting on a range of issues. Orban might find life a bit more difficult now, though, in that he's the only real EU holdout with a neutral to pro-Russian position on Ukraine: his usual right-wing allies, especially the Poles and Italians, are vehemently pro-Ukrainian, whereas Orban attacked Zelensky in his victory speech (which is something given that Zelensky is possibly the most popular politician on the continent right now).

Whilst I don't think either election was really fully fair, I do wonder if the unexpectedly large defeats for the Serbian and Hungarian opposition alliances tell us something about the limits of "united opposition" type campaigns, which a certain sort of political analyst or voter really likes but actually voters often don't. I think that's because a united opposition almost always just means "we want to get that guy out", which makes it harder to actually provide any message based on political demands and what you'll do for people: you're locked into negative-campaigning from the start.

[psyanojim]

I haven't seen much evidence of Hungary being excessively obstructive so far, more simply trying to gain the benefit of playing both sides to a degree.

The obstructions from individual EU members are in my opinion far more likely to be due to practical or economic concerns. Such as countries being unable to heat their homes or power their industries without Russian energy. The long-term consequences of foolish energy policy.

[Jubal]

Slightly old now, but Macron won re-election in France, as I'm sure people have seen: so no great change there. I know some people are pointing to Marine Le Pen's 42% as a sign of the inexorable rise of the far right there, but I think it's equally likely to be a high water-mark: there's only so many defeats you can take as a politician, it's not clear that MLP will have another run and it's not clear that the National Rally have enough of a bench to back her up. Parliamentary elections coming up in June could be more of an issue for Macron... except that in France's two-round system, being the centre party often means you only need to come second in R1 to win the seat with supporters from the right or left switching against your opponent in R2. The Macron project has been quite effectively designed to game all the issues with single-member runoff voting as a system, and whilst there are pretty deep issues with it (I'm certainly no fan of the man), one has to admit that it's largely worked so far, making him the only actual governing president (that is, with his own parliamentary majority) to ever win re-election in the modern French system.

Also a much more liberal party is going to lead a new coalition in Slovenia. Generally east-central Europe has shifted to a sharply more liberal position in recent years with more centre-authoritarian leaders losing power in Czechia (to a centre-right liberal coalition) and Slovakia (to a pretty dodgy mix of centre-right liberals, anti-corruption populists, and some pretty nasty elements, though they also have a more progressive-liberal president). Poland and Hungary are still very illiberal, of course... but now have a massive wedge between them over the issue of Ukraine as noted above.

We've also got Australia's election looming, and the Philippine presidential election coming up: the former seems like it might be going to return Labor to power after most of a decade in opposition (since 2013). In the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, the current president who is very openly in favour of extrajudicial killings of criminals, can't run again, but a ticket with an equally controversial populist and son of a human-rights-abusing former president running alongside Duterte's daughter is a probable favourite to replace him. Duterte's vice-president, who isn't from his party (the Philippines elects the posts separately) is probably the second most likely contender, with a running mate from the social-liberal Liberal party and a platform of toning down the extremes of the Duterte drug war.

[Jubal]

Bongbong Marcos did indeed win the Philippine election. Grim news really.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of protests going on in Tunisia against Kais Saied, the president and a former constitutional lawyer (ironically) who now seems to be pretty transparently gunning for all-out dictatorship in the name of "removing corruption" (but whose government doesn't seem to be doing well economically either which makes the anti-corruption message fall a bit flat). He was elected with overwhelming support so there may still be quite a lot of pro-Saied Tunisians, but it's hard to tell right now.
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/thousands-tunisia-protest-against-president-kais-saied

Also of note: opposition parties seem to make some gains in Lebanon but it's unclear how much difference this will make (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61463884), and the Panjshiri resistance have reportedly been ambushing Taliban troops - I hadn't honestly realised they still had even that sort of guerilla fighting capability (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61430836).

[Jubal]

Labor have indeed won in Australia! Still not clear whether they'll quite have a majority or fall short because there have also been swings to the liberal-centrist "Teal independent" group and some big swings to the Greens so some seats are still in the balance. But Scott Morrison has conceded and it's clear the Liberal + National alliance is miles off forming a government, they've had an absolute pummelling over the board, and Anthony Albanese will definitely be the next Australian PM.

The Liberals seems to have lost different ways in different areas, but mostly in urban and suburban areas: Sydney and Melbourne suburbs fell to independents, Brisbane saw the Greens do really well, and Labor absolutely stormed it in Western Australia. The size of the "crossbench" (that is, members not of a major party) in the lower house will likely have doubled, which is probably healthy from a diversity-of-views perspective.

[dubsartur]

Bongbong Marcos did indeed win the Philippine election. Grim news really.

I don't have access to global news, just the kinds of places, people, and events that the Guardian, the NYT, the CBC, and other Anglo Old Media talk about.  Does it look like Rodrigo Duerte picked a Marcos with his daughter as co-runner as a way of retiring to bowl at drug users' skulls or whatever old mass murderers do in retirement?

The situation in Sri Lanka is disturbing but its hard to understand why the economy is collapsing.

[Jubal]

I don't have access to global news, just the kinds of places, people, and events that the Guardian, the NYT, the CBC, and other Anglo Old Media talk about.  Does it look like Rodrigo Duerte picked a Marcos with his daughter as co-runner as a way of retiring to bowl at drug users' skulls or whatever old mass murderers do in retirement?

I think it's a bit more complicated than that, and more about Duterte's support transferring very easily to Marcos because of their similar positions than BBM being Duterte's absolute heir apparent.

[Jubal]

The far right have won the Italian election, very clearly. Lega collapsed towards the end of the campaign, but in favour of the Fratelli who are now the clear governing party, the vote share is actually quite tight between the RW alliance and the others but the right have swept the constituency seats so they'll get a chunky governing majority. (Italy elects 2/3 of MPs as proportional and 1/3 from constituencies but without the constituencies affecting the list seats as is the case in, say, Germany: so the lead one or two parties tend to get a lot of extra seats from the non-proportional constituencies).

So, uh, that's all pretty miserable :/ I guess the main hope is that they'll start squabbling (and Lega in particular have a strong incentive to be looking for ways to grab their voters back by torpedoing the government in a way they can blame Meloni and the Fratelli for... I can't see Salvini being prepared to just sit around as interior minister forever)

[Jubal]

Three notable elections this weekend.

In Latvia, which was yesterday, it looks like the generally Russian-aligned Harmony party, which typically sits in opposition, will lose its status as largest party: it's been very anti-Russia over Ukraine which may have lost it votes among the Russian minority. The current centre-right coalition looks set to retain its status and the PM's party seems set to be the largest.

Bulgaria is today, and it looks like GERB, the conservatives, will top the ballot as anti-corruption parties keep faltering in attempts to sort alternative governments. It's the country's 4th election in two years.

Brazil is also today, and very clearly the largest of the three. It looks like Lula is tipped to win over Bolsonaro, but maybe not by enough to avoid a second voting round.

[Jubal]

Bulgaria looks, like in all its recent elections, a mess - the incumbent coalition would need an extra party to sustain it, and the winners, the Conservative GERB, would need at least a three-party coalition which is unlikely to hold together given the two parties that might work with him are a far-right party and a largely minority ethnic party who may not be able to deal with each other.



Brazil is going to a second round by the looks of things. Lula is leading by about three points with 96% of districts in - that lead is a LOT smaller than polling suggested, though he's polling fairly close to expected if a point or two lower, Bolsonaro is just doing somewhat better. It looks like Bolsonaro may be doing more strongly especially in Rio and Sao Paulo than expected, not by enough to win but by enough that he's clearly won both regions and is polling up into the mid forties nationally rather than down in the thirties, which is significantly improved for him compared to the polls. Lula's vote seems to be mainly heavily buoyed up by the northeast which is his traditional electoral base.

It's hard to see Bolsonaro getting many switch votes in round two though, given the two minor candidates that have the remaining 8% or so of votes are a socially liberal centrist and a vehemently anti-Bolsonaro leftist who happens to have beef with Lula's party. There simply isn't anywhere for Bolsonaro to make up the gap. So on these results, and barring any undemocratic power grabs etc, Lula will be the next president of Brazil, even if rather more slowly than one might have hoped.

[Jubal]

Brazil round 2 is today! Lula has had a narrow but stable lead in the polls, and has attracted the support of Ciro Gomes' party (if not the man himself) and of third-placed candidate the centrist/liberal Simone Tebet. Bolsonaro has also had a not-great week, with the courts giving Lula bonus TV time because Bolsonaro lied about him so much that they decided Lula needed extra reply time, and one of Bolsonaro's prominent political supporters shooting at federal police and another chasing a Lula supporter into a restaurant at gunpoint.

Also on Tuesday, Nov 1st, Israel is having another election. The likelihood from what I've read seems to be that this will return the Netanyahu right-bloc to power with a fragile majority: parties close to the 3.25% threshold and reaching or dropping below it at the last minute could make a big difference (more likely to be in Netanyahu's favour as his bloc has fewer, bigger parties). Really depressing that he might be about to get back into power.



EDIT: Narrow as hell but Lula has been declared the winner, 51-49.

[Jubal]

The good news: Bolsonaro seems to slowly and begrudgingly be authorising a transition of power. His supporters blocking roads and disrupting food supplies probably won't make his cause popular amongst the run-of-the-mill urban middle classes many of whom ended up backing his cause.

The bad news: Netanyahu looks like he's back: exit polls are usually pretty accurate in Israel and suggest his bloc have the 61 seats they need. If the Arab party Balad, exit-polled at 3%, actually reach the 3.25% threshold, he might just get squeezed back far enough to fall short (but the chance of putting together an anti-Netanyahu government is still an essential impossibility, so that situation would probably lead to fresh elections if Netanyahu wasn't prepared to step down and allow another Likud leader to negotiate with the anti-Netanyahu right). But it feels a depressing situation.

[dubsartur]

I wonder how the rule of law is in Brazil.  Do people with several times the average income who do crimes and get caught get punished?  Or is it like the USA where unless there is a political struggle the rich honestiores are immune to punishments which ordinary people humiliores face?  If Bolsonoro thinks that if he tried a coup which failed he would spend his life in jail, that might affect his decisions.

We need to figure out how to break the principle "a frozen national government benefits the extreme right."  People like Menicus Moldbug or Netanyahu use it.

[Jubal]

We need to figure out how to break the principle "a frozen national government benefits the extreme right."

This seems a pretty fair point to me. Part of the issue is perhaps that a degree of radicalism or populism is inevitable in times of deadlock, because the system as is clearly isn't working: but the centre rarely manages to provide effective political forces that capture this sentiment, and the press in most western countries tend to be more scared of the far left than the fascists.

Re the rule of law in Brazil: Lula did end up in jail for two years for corruption before having his conviction overturned on the grounds that it was politically biased - though of course he's working class. But Bolsonaro seems sufficiently far off capturing the courts in full that I suspect he'd be at much more legal risk than, say, Trump.

Things are still looking good for Netanyahu and bad for the vestiges of political sanity in that region.

An election I'd honestly forgotten about has also happened - Denmark, which has gone very well for the ruling centre-left. A one-seat majority left bloc coalition is possible, against expectations, though the new Moderates party is pushing for a centre coalition and the centre-left PM seems willing to attempt this, which would be quite a big break from Denmark's long standing left bloc vs right bloc system.

[dubsartur]

Re the rule of law in Brazil: Lula did end up in jail for two years for corruption before having his conviction overturned on the grounds that it was politically biased - though of course he's working class. But Bolsonaro seems sufficiently far off capturing the courts in full that I suspect he'd be at much more legal risk than, say, Trump.

Its a bit hard to interpret the scandal discovered by operation Lava Jato because on one hand the police found evidence of constant paybacks from companies to politicians, but on the other hand they did find a former PM guilty, but on the gripping hand Communist courts find former officials guilty of all kinds of crimes too and nobody uses that as evidence that they have independent courts.

At least Mr. Burn Amazon Burn alias Mr. Covid-is-a-Hoax is out of office (barely!)  Another problem we have to solve is that voters don't punish politicians for killing them with poor public health measures, like they punish them for losing battles or being in charge when a recession arrives.