Comment by zigman1
2 days ago
This is almost 40% in Slovenia, but for a moderate without a clear program.
Every second election cycle Messiah like that becomes the prime minister.
2 days ago
This is almost 40% in Slovenia, but for a moderate without a clear program.
Every second election cycle Messiah like that becomes the prime minister.
In Ireland, every four years the electorate chooses which of the two large moderate parties without clear platform it would prefer (they’re quite close to being the same thing, but dislike each other for historical and aesthetic reasons), sometimes adding a small center-left party for variety. This has been going on for decades. We currently have a ruling coalition of _both_ of them.
We had a number of somewhat stilted rainbow coalitions due to our electoral system based on proportional representation with a single transferrable vote - in fact its where most of the significant policy change on e.g. Education and the Environment came from since the IMF bailout via Labour and the Greens. Previously you had the PDs as well in the McDowell era.
The problem is that the election before last was a protest vote to keep the incumbents out at the expense of actual Governance - with thoroughly unsuitable Sinn Fein candidates elected as protest votes for 1st preferences, and by transfers in marginal rural constituencies thereafter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/09/irish-voters-h...
Note that Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA and would be almost unheard of to hold any sort of meaningful majority in the Republic - but have garnered young peoples support in recent years based on fiscal fantasies of free housing and taxing high-earners even more.
This protest vote was aimed almost entirely at (rightly) destroying the influence of the Labour Party and the Greens due to successive unpopular taxes and DIE initiatives seen as self-aggrandizing and out of touch with their voting base. It saw first-timers, students, and even people on Holiday during the election get elected for Sinn Fein.
Fast-forward to today, and it quickly became evident what a disaster this was. Taking away those seats from Sinn Fein meant redistributing them elsewhere - and given the choices are basically AntiAusterityAlliance/PeopleBeforeProfit on the far-left, and a number of wildly racist and ethnonationalists like the NationalParty on the far-right, the electorate voted in force to bring in both 'moderate' incumbents on a damage-limitation basis.
https://www.politico.eu/article/irelands-elections-european-...