Talk Elections

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Fire away.  ;)

To add to the excitement, Slovenia will be lost on December 4. The governing Social Democrats are polling like 4% there now.

Sweden's "right wing" government is not that right wing by most standards, but I see your point that the left in Europe is clearly in a worse off position right now than the right was in 2000.

In 2009 after the European Parliament elections, I was so depressed. But now, I don't mind the left not being in power at this particular moment, for reasons I've been pretty vocal about. Still, it is disturbing that outside of Latin America, and some parts of Asia, the world seems to be shifting to the right.

I am curious what color they're gonna give Belgium when we finally have a government. Could it be that they'd judge what will likely be the cabinet governing the most to the right of any government since the 1980s as 'leftwing'?

Even Latin America is moving to the right.

I'd still reserve that one. Latin America is still moving to the left- if anything accelerating with Mexico set to join. India is still to the left with the weakness of the BJP opposition. Thailand is to the left as I consider the current gov't, although that is disputed. Taiwan could end up moving to the left next March. So Asia is a wild-card. Mainly it's Europe, North America, Australia, and Middle East.

Its not just europe.

Carter was in the US when Trudeau was in Canada, and I'm sure they were equals out in Europe.
Reagan was in the US when Mulroney was here, and Thatcher over in the UK, and again, I'm sure equals in other places.
Then we had people like Clinton and Chretien and Blair and Schroder etc.
Now we are swinging back to the right.

The only interest in this thread (the general pattern is so well established that, meh) is further proof that mapmaking is not (and cannot be) objective.

Just for the record, check the source at the bottom of the map (if you haven't already). I wasn't responsible for it.  ;)

Oh, I've seen the maps before so I knew where they were from (originally) without needing to look...

A friend of mine noted something that I slipped by me at first: France is clearly the wrong color in the 2000 map unless they are foolishly counting Jospin as proof of a leftist government.

The Globe and Mail is a sh*t paper.

How is the OVP-SPO coalition government considered left-wing? Idiots.

If the S means Socialist than it is.

They didn't produce the image.  :P

Why isn't Norway included on the map (colored).

Not a member of the EU. Of course... in 2000... neither was anywhere in the old East.

I know.

Someone should make a 1991 Europe map to compare. Spain and France were Left wing but the UK, Portugal, Italy and Germany were right wing. Those are the ones I remember, but I'm guessing that most of the countries in Europe were right wing at the time (the elected governments, since ex soviet-sphere countries that hadn't had free elections and were probably communist or something shouldn't count).

There are some problems, of course. One, France and Germany are both almost certain to elect left-wing governments of some sort at their next elections, although admittedly there is still time for the right in both countries to recover. Britain also looks inclined to elect a left-wing government, though that election is far in the future (but, then again, Britain only just came out of 13 years of rule by a left-wing party yet looks ready to run back to them, hardly signs of the right's strength). Italy may also elect a left-wing government, though politics there are in flux. At the least, though, the government in Italy is now of neither the right nor the left, and given the impending election, characterizing them as right-wing is not useful. Also, some of the left-right characterizations are just not useful for understanding a country's politics--thinking of Ireland and Poland in particular here (might be true of some other Eastern European countries as well, but I'm less familiar with their politics). Also, their characterization of Greece seems... overly generous to the right (new coalition is not "center-right", at least not in partisanship), especially given the current situation in Italy and polling in other major countries (France, in particular, with elections also next year).

Overall, a snapshot in time that is true in the abstract but not at all useful for a statement that the right is "dominating" when most of the major right-wing governments on that map look ready to lose the next election.

There are certain events that when they come to pass cause all governments to lose power. If the governments were all of one stripe it might falsely look like a swing to the other.

True, but -at least in the uk- Labour's conduct and policies haven't done them any favours

I also think that there being little distinction between the Right and Left's narrative on why it's happened, and what they propose to fix it, is precisely why we're left with "punish those in power!".

France, Italy and Germany should turn red soon...

Austria had a left-wing government in 2000 ? That's new to me.

I always thought it had a ÖVP-FPÖ government ... :P

And it doesn't have a left-wing government now either, but a centrist one (SPÖVP).

In a cohabitation system, the PM becomes the dominant domestic policy figure and the presidentialist system finds itself transformed into a parliamentary system. It's quite correct to judge France as left in 2000, because domestic policy was made by a left-wing government. Unless you're arguing from a 'Jospin is not a left-winger' mode.

Britain is not about to elect a left-wing government, now, or in 2015.  Ed Miliband is unelectable.

As the Green Party is only polling about 2-3% at the moment, I agree.

The image that started this thread is classing any social democrat-turn-neoliberal as left-wing, and Britain would, would've and has elected governments to the left of that.

Don't really buy that Ed Miliband is unelectable, though. He just needs to shore up the already superior vote with attractive policies - something I'm guessing is not forthcoming - rather than relying on Blair/Cameron/Cleggite charisma. We've elected many an uncharismatic politician before.

it would have been better to see not only UE-nations but all european countries

france ? left gain 40 % in all presidential elections since 1995

italy ? left is out of play

germany ? spd is in ruins

Fair enough.

If only we had a map for 2015, things would be so much better.  I really hope Ed Miliband either steps down or gets kicked out to make way for someone more electable (and no, not his brother.  Values count too.)  Unlikely to happen, I know.  I have a feeling that Labour won't be back in power until it's led by someone in the post-Blair/Brown generation, aka people elected either in 2010 or later (Chukka Umunna, Stella Creasy, Rachel Reeves, etc.).  And Greece and Spain aren't exactly embracing the right with complete love and admiration, lest we forget. 

Have you paid attention to the electoral evolutions of these countries ? The left winning commandingly in every single poll since over a year.

The first map, I didn't realise that President Chirac was so left-wing.

And would it be fair to say that the Irish government is slightly more left-wing today (Labour) than it was 10 years ago?

And yes, wait for France 2012, Germany 2013 and whenever Italy has their next election...

And on Ed Miliband, Mariano Rajoy was meant to be unelectable as well until the government messed up.

Labour may be in government, but they're subordinate to a larger party who are economically further to the right than Fianna Fáil were (and I'm not referring to the CDU). I would say myself that it all balances out.

Remember too that what is "right wing" in Stockholm would be "left wing" in Houston.

Hash pointed out on the last page why it isn't necessarily incorrect to consider the government left wing in 2000 since Jospin was Prime Minister and set the domestic agenda.

Yeah. Of all those right-wing governments, which one would actually be right-wing by US standards? Any? Which one is the most right-wing? Still the Tories, even with Cameron? I'm unsure, need to think a bit.

Poland is the only country in europe with really right-wing parties.

In many ways the current government surpasses Thatcher in its support for neoliberalism, so there's no doubt it'd be considered right-wing in any country, and since the Tories have largely been aping the Republicans for the past thirty years, I don't really get how they'd go unconsidered (but OMG they support gay marriage, so that must make them centrist!).

That might be part of it; from a North American perspective the British tories are rather socially liberal... when compared to the CDN Tories, AUS Liberals or in particular the Republicans... many are bible breathing radicals who to this day are very socially conservative. While we would see centrists as those who are Free market neoliberals but balanced with that liking gays and immigrants side and see, they also don't see the government as the devil (like CDN Liberals or Democrats)

What would really be interesting to compare would be the decline of the moderate, centrist parites... look at the CDN Liberals, LD's in the UK, FDP in Germany, MD in France... the world seems to be less willing to support middle-of-the-roaders now a days.

The MoDem would be doing far better if it wasn't some useless personality cult founded for and by an incompetent douchebag whose only purpose is to whine and complain about how everybody is bad and how, therefore, he is so great because he's not like everybody else but has no ideology otherwise. And the French centre has room to grow if it wasn't divided into 6 million rival parties whose only members are boring regional barons who think they're all presidential material.

I think the Spanish, British, Irish, Austrian (FPÖ), Swiss (SVP) and Eastern European right-wings would be in majority GOP. Part of the French, German and Italian ones too (anti-immigration stooges, harsh law-and-order guys or neoliberal hacks). The scandinavian right is most certainly democrat, so are probably the French and German mainstreams. Don't know Greece and Portugal enough to tell.



Yeah, UDF's explosion turned out to be a real catastrophe for the French centre-right. Hopefully Sarko's rout in 2012 will push centrists to organize more efficiently and make the UMP more appealing to them.

Ireland: Fianna Fáil would largely be socially-conservative (by American standards) but economically-moderate. Think old-style rust-belt machine Democrats.

Fine Gael would have a contingent of the same sort, but might tend more towards country-club Republicanism, although there is a very economically right-wing and authoritarian element lurking in the youth wing and in parts of the backwoods (see here (http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/11/22/audio-darren-scully-explains-himself/) for a current example).

Few if any Irish politicians, though, would admit to being GOP supporters.

Comparisons of non-American parties to American ones are problematic, of course, but the Irish political system is reasonably similar to the American system of old in that the parties are differentiated primarily by Civil War allegiance rather than ideology. One major difference is that Fianna Fáil is a traditional government party, to which the United States has no analog.

[quote author=Meno male che Silvio non c'è più ! link=topic=144115.msg3095925#msg3095925
Have you paid attention to the electoral evolutions of these countries ? The left winning commandingly in every single poll since over a year.
[/quote]

He has a points when it comes to Germany though, sadly.

The fact that we rule Europe know and can implement our agenda on other people greatly helps Merkel with her right wing.
On the other hand, while my party has recovered to 29-30%, this is just not enough. Ideologically, we are still dead. The fact that 6-7% of Germans (mostly leftwingers) consider voting for a joke party makes that very clear.

Yes, I know this has little to do with the topic at hand of change of governing parties in Europe, but just for contrast I made this :P

Blue is right wing, red is left wing.



South America 2000

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South America 2011

() (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/502/southamerica2011.png/)


I didn't color Suriname and Guyana because I have no idea what kind of governments they had and I'm too lazy to do the research. They are unimportant however ;D

Yes, I know it's difficult to pin down a real ideology on a lot of these countries and some of them are hybrids or simple populists, but whatever, it's close enough :P

... to help, it looks like Suriname and Guyana would be Red (since the ruling party includes the former dictator who in the 80s set up a socalist republic?... but i don't know much about Suriname, best guess here) but Guyana heads to the polls this month so that might change. Meaning only Columbia and Chile have Right & Centre-right governments

Suriname now has a left-wing, populist President in Desi Bouterse (,though both of these terms are relative in the case of the former dictator).

2000 saw incompetent, undemocratically elected Jules Wijdenbosch being replaced by Ronald Venetiaan, who may be described as a centrist liberal.

Surinamian politics aren't really a left-right affair, though. The main breakline is between the incompetent populism of the Mega-Combinatie and the competence and democratic values of the NFDO.


(Also, I'm not a specialist on Surinamian elections, merely a somewhat interested outsider! I trust Freek for example could tell us a lot more about it.)

Also, French Guyana should be red in 2000 and blue in 2011 (see France in the OP's map). ;D

Anyway, as I said "You can't compare loser countries to real countries" which vanished for some reason without any noted moderator action noted in my log, so I will say what I mean using less colourful language.

You can not compare the "right/left" wingidness of a government in a country that is struggling in the middle of bottom of the "developing country" list, to that of a country that is "developed". Developed and Developing countries have very very different needs and trying to compare places like Guyana (on this map) to Luxembourg (on the previous map) is just plain silly.

Oh, but this moderator doesn't generally bother with such bureaucratic geegaws.

Is that character still in the party/has there been any move to throw him out?

I know he's resigned from his role as mayor.

He has resigned from the ceremonial post of Mayor but is still a town and county councillor and still a member of Fine Gael, who are probably hoping that people forget about the episode and move on.

I know that it is completely off topic but this makes me smile :)

People saying rightist parties in Europe would be considered liberals in the USA don't know Esperanza Aguirre, Cospedal, Arias Cañete, Vidal Quadras, Mayor Oreja, AZNAR, Maria San Gil, Francisco Camps, Carlos Fabra, Alvarez Casco (formerly), Ana Botella, Valcárcel, Javier Arenas, Alicia Sánchez Camacho... There are many who would support David Duke I think (MayorOrejAguirre)

David Duke is hardly representative of the American right, though.

Next month, these 2 people will be the last remaining PM's from Social Democratic Parties:

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Agreed. I try explaining that to Americans that think all of Europe is to our left. It can be a difficult task. Then again, as Xahar points out, sometimes we need to explain to Europeans that the European extreme Right wouldn't fit into the GOP.  ;)