Norwegian local elections, 2015

[politicus]

Obviously being in government often does that (and a pretty consistent feature of politics in all Scandinavian countries is that governments often stage decent comebacks from midterm slumps even if not always enough to get re-elected) but there are also specific reasons, i.e. the fact that they're kind of terrible at the whole governing business.

Having to rely on support from centrist and/or social liberal parties is a problem as well for a government that was elected on being tough as nails on a number of issues. The first Blue-Blue (= dark blue) government has turned out to be pretty moderate on immigration and justice (by necessity) and that disappoints certain segments (incl. many marginal voters). "Iron Erna" and her allies in the Progress Party have governed pretty much like an ordinary centre-right coalition

[politicus]

Latest poll by InFact for tabloid VG:

Labour (Ap) 32.3
Conservatives (Høyre) 23.5
Progress Party (FrP) 12.5
Christian Democrats (KrF) 5.4
Liberal Left (Venstre) 5.2
Environmental Party The Greens (De Grønne) 5.2
Centre Party (SP) 6.1
Socialist Left Party (SV) 4.1

[politicus]

Meanwhile, H's collapse in Bergen seems especially remarkable to me:
http://www.vg.no/valgnatt/valg/kommune/fylker/hordaland/kommuner/bergen/.

Yeah, Bergen has this multi-generational urbanites/old money/bourgeoisie culture element. It is a natural Høyre stronghold in many ways. Though, it may be a thing of the past.

[politicus]

Thx for the background.

In addition, there's been a massive scandal these past few months over corruption allegations against mayor Trude Drevland.

Who also looks like this.. (and acts the part, so to speak).





Really hope the light rail will be led around Bryggen btw.

[politicus]

Can't really help myself from posting a few pics of Trude Drevland with Erna Solberg. Talk about a difference in style:

[politicus]

I should have specified: The options are either across Bryggen, or in a tunnel through some rather unstable soil that passes under some old historic buildings. No good options here, really.

Yeah, but I still hope they do the tunnel anyway. Across is assured destruction of historical buildings, around is taking a risk, but potentially saving it all.

[politicus]

MDGs Shohaib Sultan may become mayor (a ceremonial position in Oslo, Bergen and Tromsø)

Why does Tromsø follow the two big cities on this when Stavanger and Trondheim apparently have Mayors with real power? Can Norwegian cities just organize their own "constitution" and decide how to organize local government?

Tromsø: The center-right will lose power in the largest city in the north. Headaches are on the way for Ap, though, who will have to get Rødts support to govern. Rødt may very well end up with the mayor. Also a huge loss for Høyre, who go from 16 to 9 seats out of 43.

43 seats are a lot for a town that size. In comparison Copenhagen only has 55 seats in the Citizens Representation and Oslo has 59 in Bystyret. Why is the City Council this large up there?

[politicus]

We have three different models in Denmark as well. It is just that only the 5 biggest municipalities: Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Århus, Odense and Ålborg are allowed to choose between two models. The rest have to use the committee model, where there is an executive Mayor and then various committees (economy, school, social services etc.), with the parties represented proportionally and chairmanships and the Mayor post divided between whatever parties can form a winning coalition (nothing for the opposition).

The bigger ones can choose magistrate government with administrations headed by Mayors (Copenhagen) or Councillors (the rest) distributed proportionally among parties and a Lord Mayor (Copenhagen) or Mayor at the top as the leader of the city government (very much with real power). Right now only Århus, Ålborg and Frederiksberg have this in the pure form. Copenhagen and Odense have since 1998 opted for the intermediary form with shared leadership of the administration between committees and Councillors/Mayors. In this you have 5-6 committees running the administration, preparing cases, executing decisions, deciding minor stuff etc. The committee chairmen are still called Councillors/Mayors and are full time politicians (unlike committee chairmen in minor municipalities) leading the administration in their field (schools, traffic etc.). The chairmen of the other committees are then born members of the Economy Committee. Councillors/Mayor posts are still distributed proportionally between the parties. Copenhagen at one point applied for a "winner takes all" model (similar to the minor/medium municipalities), but was turned down by the Ministry of the Interior (during the VK-government and hardly surprising since this would have shut out the centre-right from any influence).

The Mayor/Lord Mayor is always the leader in DK and the idea of a ceremonial Mayor was completely alien to me. Never really thought about that possibility.

[politicus]

In the industrial settlement of Årdal, MDGs single representative on the new municipal council decided to let her five-year old son draw lots to find out which parties she would enter into negotiations with. The son picked the center-left.

lol

[politicus]

In the industrial settlement of Årdal, MDGs single representative on the new municipal council decided to let her five-year old son draw lots to find out which parties she would enter into negotiations with. The son picked the center-left.

lol

That's not really more laughable than drawing lots to appoint jurors who can decide on a capital punishment... Sortition is not way more laughable than democracy, both have their merits and drawbacks.

lol was for the method, not the procedure

[politicus]

Why are KrF so strong in the Southern muncipalaties?

Lots of Christians.

Rather a specific kind of them: fundamentalist Christians.

Why are there so many conservative Christians down there? Retiree spot?

Nah, SW = Bible Belt.

[politicus]

Why are there so many conservative Christians down there? Retiree spot?

Nah, SW = Bible Belt.

Quite interestingly, despite the image of the Nordic countries as very secular and non-religious, most of us have a Conservative miniature bible belt. In Sweden it covers mostly Jönköping county (sometimes given the pun nickname Bönköping which means Prayer Town) southern Västergötland and a string of islands on the West coast north and west of Gothenburg. The Norwegian one is in the area you identified,  in Finland it's some of the areas in Österbotten centered around Jakobstad.

There is one on Jutland in Denmark as well, but I think Politicus would tell me I was wrong if I tried to identify where exactly, so I'll leave it to her better knowledge to tell you exactly where it is.

Iceland, as far as I know, doesn't have a bible belt, though I imagine politicus can correct me on this as well. On the other hand all of the Faroe Islands outside of Torshavn is a bible belt.        

Iceland doesn't really have a Bible Belt in the conventional sense, although there are certainly regions that are more religious than others, but the state church has pretty much had things under control up there until pedophilia scandals in recent decades undermined them somewhat. The small fundi Christian Party never got off the ground and polled around 0.1% before they disbanded. The Vestmanna Islands off the south coast may be a weaksauce bible belt of sorts (but that would be pushing the limits of the term quite a bit) and the Westfiords in the NW are fairly religious (but in different ways as illustrated with the refugee reception thing, where small Westfiord municipalities have been among the first to welcome refugees and Vestmanna among the anti-refugee holdouts - both influenced by religion).

Regarding the Faeros they are actually quite diverse when speaking of religion. This graph of party strength illustrates it well.

http://kvf.fo/greinar/2015/09/02/si-foroyakortini-soleidis-atkvoddu-foroyingar#.VegZ_7TxlsM
Red = highest
Blue = lowest

The fundi Centre Party is at the bottom. The areas in red are their strongest. As you can see the southern part of Suduroy and Eysturoy (except the far west) + parts of southern and eastern Streymoy are the real Bible Belt. Whereas Vagar, Northern Suduroy, Sandoy with surrounding islets and Western Streymoy are decidedly not Bible Belt. The areas around Torshavn (and the town itself) actually have a higher fundi share than many more remote places. Fundis have migrated to "town" as everyone else and Torshavn is close to some old fundi strongholds, but the town is of course socially liberal as a whole.
The Nordoyar are hard to pin down as most of the population (90%+) now lives in Klaksvik, which is a culturally conservative place with some evangelical congregations and Inner Mission strength, but not dominated by fundis. There are also little places up there with no fundis at all and the overall fundi share isn't really high enough to call it a part of the Bible Belt, but certainly relatively SoCon.

Suduroy both being an SD stronghold and partly Bible Belt and whose two phenomenons overlapping somewhat has been a main factor in making gay marriage so tricky in the Faroes.



The Danish "Bible Belt" is pretty weaksauce these days, but was traditionally located around Ringkøbing Fiord in Western Jutland stretching north and inland with diminishing strength, the Hedensted/Løsning area in SE Jutland between Horsens and Vejle was home to "The Strong Jutlanders", a late 18th century/early 19th century pietistic/Lutheran orthodox layman movement and still has fundis and Bornholm has a high evangelical free church share, but compared to Vest-Agder or even Bönköping, this isn't much of a bible belt at all. Fundis are 7-8% tops in even their strongest areas.

Is the Finnish Bible Belters Swedish speaking or both communities? I see Jakobstad is 56.4% Swedish-speaking/40.2% Finnish-speaking according to Wiki (would have guessed 2:1, but Swedish keeps shrinking).

[politicus]

On Norway and religion the church and religion research institute KIFO actually published a big 2010 study, which followed changes in opinion of religion and religious life from 1991-2008. It showed that people from Rogaland and the Agder counties had a markedly more active religious life and more often expressed a personal faith than other Norwegians, but that pietism related to religious awakening movements and religious associations had nearly collapsed in the rest of the Vestland with people being only somewhat more religious than those in Eastern Norway and Trøndelag, and the Church of Norway taking over.

Even outside of secular Oslo most of Østlandet had little faith! Østfold and especially Hedmark are fairly irreligious places (it seems the closer you get to Sweden the less religious people are, interpret it whichever way you like..). Trøndelag also lacks personal faith, but has a higher share of alternative religion/new age than Østlandet. Northern Norway also has a high share of alternative religion/spirituality (understandably, I would go pantheist with all that natural beauty as well), but otherwise remains split with both lots of hardcore atheists and pockets of deeply religious Laestidians.
 
While you can be homophobic without being religious I doubt that all rural Norwegians are equally homophobic, secular Hedmark or spiritual/atheist Finnmark being equal to the SW on this doesn't  seem credible.