Five things to watch out for in the European Parliament Elections

We are now four weeks away from the 2014 elections to the European Parliament.  Most of the continent will be voting on Sunday 25 May, though some countries will be voting as early as the Thursday before (check the European Parliament website for the voting day in each country).  It's been a challenging session for the EU since the last election in 2009, as the global banking crisis turned into the sovereign debt crisis and the single currency, as well as the EU itself at one point, were threatened with extinction.  Even now, in 2014, many member states are still having to push through painful austerity as they bring down the levels of their deficits, unemployment is still stubbornly high in southern Europe, and some countries are even looking at a real risk of deflation.

But it wasn't all bad news, though.  Instead of the Eurozone completely disintegrating, as appeared possible at the end of 2011, its membership grew by two states (Estonia in 2011 and Latvia in 2014), and Croatia became the 28th member of the EU in 2013.  Many steps have also been taken to strengthen the monetary union between the 18 Eurozone members to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from reoccurring.  Generally speaking, Europe is becoming more closely integrated - but is that what it wants?

What's next after the US Debt Ceiling?

With less than an hour to go before the debt ceiling deadline, President Obama signed legislation that basically kicks the debt can briefly down the road.  It brought an end to the government shutdown, reopening it until January 15th.  It also suspended the debt ceiling until February 7th*, and set up a committee to come up with a bipartisan budget deal.

If this seems like deja vu to some of you, it does look very similar to the deal we had following the crisis two years ago.  But there are a couple of critical differences here, which are worth looking into.

Redistricting in Canada - The Final Results

Later this month, the Governor General of Canada will sign into law the new riding boundaries for the Canadian Parliament.  This will officially create the 30 new seats in the House of Commons starting in the 2015 General Election.  This comes after both the 2011 Census, which tells us how the population has shifted across the country, as well as a change to the formula on how seats are allocated between the provinces.  But what does this mean for the balance of power in Canadian politics?

A look into the surge in Liberal Party support

In 1922, electoral history was made in the United Kingdom as the Liberal Party failed to finish first or second in a general election for the first time in its history, as the relatively new Labour Party surpasses them to become the major party on the left.  Neither the Liberal Party, nor its successor the Liberal Democrats, have done better than third in any general election since.

In the aftermath of the 2011 federal election in Canada, many were asking if the Liberal Party of Canada was following in the same path as their British counterparts.  The party finished in third place for the first time since Confederation, finishing with only 34 seats in the 308-seat House of Commons.  The only worse result in Canadian history (at the federal level at least) is the Progressive Conservative party in 1993, when the Progressive Conservatives dropped from a majority government to just two seats.

If you look at the polls now, one can come to a conclusion that the Liberal Party has rebounded.  Since Justin Trudeau announced his intention to stand for the leadership, support for the party has nearly doubled, from the low 20s in October last year to 40% now.  If there were a general election now, the Liberals would be set for a majority government.

Should David Cameron regret campaigning against AV?

In May 2011, as part of the deal that brought together the coalition government, the UK was asked if it wanted to change its electoral process to use the Alternate Vote system as opposed to the current First Past The Post.  Recall that the AV system involves voters ranking the candidates, and essentially eliminates the bottom candidates and redistributes their votes until one candidate gets above 50% of the total.  For a number of reasons, some based on merit and some based on other things, the idea was rejected by a margin of more than two to one.

In the lead-up to the referendum, the Conservatives were campaigning to keep FPTP, while the Liberal Democrats were the driving force behind AV.  However, over the last year, we see that UKIP has been taking a considerable share of the votes away from the Conservatives.  So was opposing AV a mistake on the part of the Tories?

Five things we learned from the UK local elections

Last Thursday, elections were held throughout most of England to elect county councils.  These particular councils were last fought in 2009, when Conservative popularity was at its peak.  This meant that the Tories had a very high starting point, controlling 28 of the 34 councils being contested in England.  Despite them losing the popular vote (at least according to BBC figures), they were still able to control a majority of the councils up for election.  The UK Independence Party (UKIP), though, has reached record support, taking nearly a quarter of the vote and over a hundred council seats.

So what have we learned from these council elections?

Five things we learned in Eastleigh

Last night, the voters of Eastleigh elected a new MP.  The result came in around 02:20 GMT this morning, and looked like this:

Of course, as is the law of politics, every party will try to put some spin on it.  But what can we take from yesterday's by-election result?