Nice link

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Jens would know better (obviously) but I dimly remember the polls giving the government leads until the end of the campaign when things tightened up a lot.

At the last election in 2007, the polls all showed a "hung" parliament until literaly the last day(s). It looked like the VKO-majority was gone and that the new party, New Alliance (now Liberal Alliance) would hold the decisive votes. NA managed to mess everything up, went from about 5-6 % to 2,8 % of the votes and those 2-3 % moved to VKO, who just keep their majority.

Very sad news. I was really hoping that the man with the coolest mustache would become the next Canadian PM.
A great loss for Canada and for any pracmatic leftwinger across the world.

Gustaf/Swedish Cheese, what does this say? A Swedish church was damaged in Oslo?

http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?id=797489

Damaged in connection with the bombing yesterday, but it wasn't destroyed (as some media apparently have said)

What he said

Beat the Swede ;-)
On another note - I was quite impressed with SVT1 that led its transmission to NRK1 both yesterday and today. DR chose to show Disney cartoons instead yesterday while the events at Oslo and Utyøa happened!

Gustaf/Swedish Cheese, what does this say? A Swedish church was damaged in Oslo?

http://www.svenskakyrkan.se/default.aspx?id=797489

Damaged in connection with the bombing yesterday, but it wasn't destroyed (as some media apparently have said)

Do we know how soon after he first started killing people on the island that the first real police came onto the island?

Ive heard 90 minutes before he was arrested.

That is what Norwegian Police says on NRK (Norwegian BBC)
This is truely tragic

St. Pölten has voted and the results are:

44.501 eligible voters
25.816 votes were cast (Turnout: 58%)
25.293 votes were valid

14.357 votes - 56.8% - SPÖ
  6.396 votes - 25.3% - ÖVP
  2.708 votes - 10.7% - FPÖ
  1.235 votes -   4.9% - Greens
     299 votes -   1.2% - Wir für St. Pölten
     175 votes -   0.7% - Bürgerliste - Für St. Pölten
     123 votes -   0.5% - CPÖ

What happened to the Greens?

They had a Turkish front-runner. Bradly-effect, you know.

We can apparently always count on Austria being worse than Denmark

St. Pölten has voted and the results are:

44.501 eligible voters
25.816 votes were cast (Turnout: 58%)
25.293 votes were valid

14.357 votes - 56.8% - SPÖ
  6.396 votes - 25.3% - ÖVP
  2.708 votes - 10.7% - FPÖ
  1.235 votes -   4.9% - Greens
     299 votes -   1.2% - Wir für St. Pölten
     175 votes -   0.7% - Bürgerliste - Für St. Pölten
     123 votes -   0.5% - CPÖ

What happened to the Greens?

I've attempted to decipher the Liberal change map in my latest blog post.

(sorry to promote it so much, but I do see the blog as an off shoot of this forum )

I think your blog is excellent and I for one have no problem with you plugging it here.

I second that - and will add that you might even attract serious posters to the forum
On a more thread relevant note. I find the Canadian party system quite facinating. It seems to be caught between the Anglo-Saxon very personalised system, where it is the person more that the party you vote for, and the "European", where parties are predominant and where it is not uncommon to see elections to parliament where a substatial portion of the MP's are newly elected and unknown to the general public. The average Danish MP scores between 1000 and 8000 personal votes, far from the cirka 20.000 votes a mandate actually "costs"
NDP's Quebec group of virtually unknowns is something that I wouldn't expect to see in a Westminster system.

It seems the Left is becoming more and more irrelevant across Germany.

Not very surprising. The Left is usually disregarded in news coverage, and when something is reported about the party for a change it is about the constant infighting and internal bickering which has been happening there since at least the 2009 election. At least the FDP receives almost constant media coverage, even if it is a very negative one.

The media ignores the Left and the Left is concerned with fighting itself than fighting other political parties most of the time.

In a country where all the parties, except for Die Linke, form government somehow, somewhere, at sometime, with someone, irrelevency catches up to you since neither the SPD or the CDU/CSU (or even the Greens, who apparently, are becoming big players) want anything to do with you.

Die Linke is part of the government in Brandenburg and Berlin, so they aren't completely irrelevant, but under pressure from a very popular Green Party.

I'm a little out of it at the moment (and will be until I get to eat again at some point tomorrow; might not be online ar hyd y nos though I hope to be) so can't remember the usual answer to this question so must ask again; what times (BST) to the polls in each set close?

At what time can we expect the first results? (and perhaps what time CET )

Everything will be available at 10:00 EST (so 3:00 AM GMT and 4:00 AM CET). Ontario, Quebec and the Prairies close at 9:30 EST but they can't put anything on the internet until BC closes at 10.

They won't be able to count much in the first half hour anyways so it's not that big of a deal. The Atlantic provinces (34 seats) will probably be wrapped up by 10 so we'll get a lot of solid numbers out of there really quickly.

Also who knows what will pop up on Twitter...

Thanks - so I might as well go to bed early - anybody knows some sort of live stream accessable from Europe?

At what time can we expect the first results? (and perhaps what time CET )

In Denmark the news bureau for some strange reasons uses the Swedish name for True Finns - doesn't really make sense to use that name for a party that is against mandatory Swedish in schools! Besides that the reports has been pretty useless and the newspapers is having a hard time understading the Finnish political system especially the use of coalitions of many parties with quite different ideologies.

[Korsnäs]

Korsnäs
Center Party of Finland    0,3    -1,6
National Coalition Party    0,3    -0,2
Social Democratic Party of Finland    6,5    +5,2
Left Alliance    0,3    -0,3    +0,3
Green League    0,2    -0,2    +0,2
Christian Democrats in Finland    1,3    -2,8
Swedish People's Party in Finland    88,9    -1,8
True Finns    1,0    +0,5
Communist Party of Finland    0,1
Suomen Senioripuolue    0,3    +0,2
Piraattipuolue    0,3    +0,3
Vapauspuolue (VP) - Suomen tulevaisuus    0,1    +0,1
Pontus Toivanen    0,3    +0,3

http://hannahakko.fi/mina/

Too bad she lost

I like her slogan

 53% Green
 33% SNP
 15% Lib Dem
   -3% Lab
-41% Con

Not that much of a surprice. Good thing that I somewhat agree with the parties, we share group with in the EU Parliament

100 % with the Greens on economy, not really in line when it comes to the EU

Question to Hashemite:

Do you know the best Green result in any regional or national election in any country in Europe ?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Greens_and_Farmers

19.6% in 2010?

The Danish Socialist Party (SF) is more of a Green Party that ZZS in my opinion. Last regional elections: 19,0 % in the Capital Region. Last municipal elections (2009): 22,2 % in Copenhagen, 28,4 % in Lolland (29,5 % in  2005)

Latvia still had the first Green PM Indulis Emsis in 2004

Ecolo got 18,5 % in the Walloon parlament in 2009 and 19,2 in Bruxelles parlament same year (Ecolo & Groen! combined)

I just found out the Danish parliament voted unanimously to send aircraft to enforce the zone which I find kind of interesting. I figured the Red-Green Alliance at least would've voted against.

And they are getting quite some internal head for that decision - I'm seriously considering attending their congress in May, just to witness the discussion

Which means an excuse to post some maps, which show things to be somewhat more complicated...

Does confirm the link between accent and politics on the mainland, though. Which, really, is the only link that looked clearcut on the original map anyways.

There still is oceans of difference between the voters, that voted new Venstre mayors in in Fredericia, Vejle and Kolding and the ones, that yet again gave majorities to Venstre in RingKøbing-Skjern. Bible belt voters are diehard loyal V votes, while the more urbane East Coast voters in the well off Triangle Area are more prone to swing. Vejle did have a SF mayor for 12 years!

In Sjaelland outside Copenhagen, the standard speakers seem to be the Conservatives. Perhaps that's the "growth corridor", ie an area of fairly exurban character? One also wonders how Copenhageners came to talk like East Jutlanders, rather than rural Sjaellanders, in the first place.

They don't. Stød only refers to a certain way of pronouncing certain letters in words making it possible to tell the difference between fx bønder (farmers) and bønner (beans) (the d is silent)
People from CPH and East Jutland have very different accents. In fact, those two accents are classics cinematographic accents. If you want someone who is adorable and a bit naive in Copenhagen, she talks with a East Jutland (Aarhus) accent. And the rough guy that always gets into trouble but deep down has a hart of gold, he has the strong unpolished Copenhagen borough accent (stenbroaccent)

Back to the map. It is rather useless. First of, it only goes by the mayor's colour, not how the majority is in the municipality. Second, especially the Triangle area (Vejle, Kolding and Fredericia) the left wing lost their majority for the first time in cirka 100 years. Nobody expects the Venstre mayors in Fredericia nor Kolding to survive the next election unless they somehow manage to become very popular. They won because of dissatisfaction with the sitting SD mayors.

And do remember that some places you got C mayors supported by SD; SD's supported by V and as many combinations as it is possible.

Rather useless or completely useless?

Completely

In Sjaelland outside Copenhagen, the standard speakers seem to be the Conservatives. Perhaps that's the "growth corridor", ie an area of fairly exurban character? One also wonders how Copenhageners came to talk like East Jutlanders, rather than rural Sjaellanders, in the first place.

They don't. Stød only refers to a certain way of pronouncing certain letters in words making it possible to tell the difference between fx bønder (farmers) and bønner (beans) (the d is silent)
People from CPH and East Jutland have very different accents. In fact, those two accents are classics cinematographic accents. If you want someone who is adorable and a bit naive in Copenhagen, she talks with a East Jutland (Aarhus) accent. And the rough guy that always gets into trouble but deep down has a hart of gold, he has the strong unpolished Copenhagen borough accent (stenbroaccent)

Back to the map. It is rather useless. First of, it only goes by the mayor's colour, not how the majority is in the municipality. Second, especially the Triangle area (Vejle, Kolding and Fredericia) the left wing lost their majority for the first time in cirka 100 years. Nobody expects the Venstre mayors in Fredericia nor Kolding to survive the next election unless they somehow manage to become very popular. They won because of dissatisfaction with the sitting SD mayors.

And do remember that some places you got C mayors supported by SD; SD's supported by V and as many combinations as it is possible.

First: Is it possible to estimate the distribution of TD's? I know that SF will not get 15 % of the TD's, but I wonder what percentage FF will get, given their presence all over the country

One or two blogs have now taken to making seat projections based on each new poll. I'd advise taking plenty of salt with you on considering such projections, obviously, but they provide not completely unreasonable efforts at guessing the sorts of net results that might emerge.

Second: Any chance the Greens will survive. It's any of their politicians popular enougth to carry a mandate?

Yeah, there's a chance. Trevor Sargent (Dublin N) is presumably best placed to be returned, but it's an uphill battle.

Whether or not the party will survive if they don't get anyone elected? I suspect it will, in some form or other, keep going - but who knows.

Thanks / I do realise that mandates can only be an estimate because of the electoral system. I'm somewhat sure that the Greens will survive as a party - It was more the Dail, I was thinking of. It looks like they are going to have a interesting election night.

A couple of questions:

First: Is it possible to estimate the distribution of TD's? I know that SF will not get 15 % of the TD's, but I wonder what percentage FF will get, given their presence all over the country

Second: Any chance the Greens will survive. It's any of their politicians popular enougth to carry a mandate?

(Atlas)nkpolitics1279 - lean dumb

I'm beginning to concur.

But somewhat entertaining   The assumption that American voters are going to act like 2000 and 2004 is odd... (trying to be not to "Nordic" harsh ;-) )

Spain (regionals), Finland, Thailand, Argentina, Estonia, Nicaragua certainly don't count.

Glad that you didn't include Denmark on that list It will probably be one of the most exciting parliamentary elections in many years.
That said, I am looking forward to the BW election as a test of the Green Party's actual strength.

Labour
Greens (if they promise never to join a FF government again)
SF
Higgins' outfit
anybody who isn't FF or FG