Random international maps thread

[Citizen Hats]

Down to the canton? Mon Dieu!

[Citizen Hats]

Ask and ye shall receive

[Citizen Hats]

Fort McMurray-Athabasca 2011. one dot = 1 vote

[Zanas]

I don't understand what those "effective number of parties" maps last page measure exactly ? And even if you explained the formula, I can't get a picture of what it calculates and represent. Care to explain it to me ?

Never mind that, I just read your blog post, and I got it all. To put it simply, I guess we could say it measures how many parties or candidates had a credible shot at winning, more or less.

[Zanas]

For what it's worth, last French presidential election of 2012 was ENP = 4.77, and the current EP elction in France is ca. 5.85.

The Netherlands should be quite fun in that regard !

edit : yes, present polling for next Dutch general election is at 7.73 ENP...

[Citizen Hats]

For what it's worth, last French presidential election of 2012 was ENP = 4.77, and the current EP elction in France is ca. 5.85.

The Netherlands should be quite fun in that regard !

edit : yes, present polling for next Dutch general election is at 7.73 ENP...

Unfortunately, though, the Dutch don't have constituencies :<

[SNJ1985]

Finnish referendum on European Union membership, 1994:

[SNJ1985]

Finnish parliamentary election, 1991:

[SNJ1985]

European Parliament election in Belgium, 1994:



http://d-maps.com/m/europa/belgium/belgique/belgique60.gif

[Hash]

Guyana, better known as "that country you didn't know was in South America" or "the country Venezuela wants to wipe off the map", is a country geographically located in South America but with cultural, linguistic, historical and political ties to the English-speaking Caribbean. It is the only South American country with English as its official language. Guyana was a Dutch and, after 1815, British colony; it gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1966 and became a Commonwealth republic in 1970. Its official name is the "Cooperative Republic of Guyana", relic of a bygone era in its republican history, and its constitution defines it as a state "in the course of transition from capitalism to socialism". Its economy was dominated by sugar and rice plantations during the colonial period; today, sugar and rice are complemented by gold and bauxite mining, which account for most of its export earnings.

The defining feature of its politics is race. Guyana is a multi-ethnic country made up of Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese, mixed race and indigenous (Amerindian) communities. The Afro-Guyanese, who have accounted for about 30-32% of the population since the 1960s, are the descendants of African slaves imported by the Dutch and the British until the nineteenth century to work in the sugar and rice plantations. After the abolition of slavery, many former slaves moved to the cities and an Afro-Guyanese middle-class (English-speaking, Protestant and seeking higher social status) grew, but a poorer and more radical black working-class worked in plantations, mining or dockyards. The Indo-Guyanese, who made up nearly half of the population (47-51%) between the 1960s and 1990s, but now make up a declining share of the population (43% in 2002, 40% in 2012), are the descendants of indentured workers brought from India by the British between 1838 and 1917 to work on sugar and rice fields, after the abolition of slavery and the failure of schemes to attract Portuguese and Chinese workers. Indentured contracts were legally abolished in 1917, but many East Indians chose to remain in Guyana after their contracts ended. Many continued to work in sugar and rice plantations, but others moved to the cities as merchants or labourers. The mixed race population has grown from about 10-12% of the population to 17% in 2002 and 20% in 2012. The indigenous (Amerindian) population, concentrated in the remote regions of the country, has grown in numbers and proportion to 10.5% of the population in 2012. There are tiny remnants of a declining Portuguese and Chinese population (about 2,300 Portuguese and 1,300 Chinese, the Portuguese made up 2% - over 8,500 - in 1946).



The Afro-Guyanese became politically active in the early 1900s, forming the first trade unions and pushing for political representation to dislodge the old white colonial plantocracy. The Indo-Guyanese only became politically active in the 1940s, which is also when Guyana's current political system took form and when the seeds of later racially polarized politics were sown under the strong personal influences of two men, Cheddi Jagan and Linden Forbes Burnham. The former (b. 1917) was a second-generation Indo-Guyanese from a modest lower middle-class background, although he attended Guyana's elite college and studied dentistry in Illinois, which is also where he met his wife, Janet Chagan, née Rosenberg, a white Jewish woman from Chicago. Cheddi Jagan was a Marxist anti-colonialist who scared the British colonial authorities, who saw him as a dangerous communist. Forbes Burnham (b. 1923) was the son of an Afro-Guyanese headmaster, so he came from a relatively privileged background and obtained a law degree in London. Burnham was also a socialist, albeit more pragmatic than Jagan. Jagan and Burnham co-founded the left-wing, multi-ethnic and anti-colonialist People's Progressive Party (PPP) in 1950, which went on to win the 1953 elections in a landslide, backed by a primarily working/lower-class but multi-ethnic base. Led by Jagan, the first PPP government was not allowed to govern for even a year before the British suspended democracy, instinctively suspicious of Jagan's radicalism and balking at a labour relations bill which would have allegedly strengthened the hand of the PPP's union ally (GIWU). It is also during this time that conflicts over civil service appointments between Jagan and Burnham split the PPP along (primarily) racial lines, with Burnham eventually founding the People's National Congress (PNC).

On a more exclusivist and racially-oriented platform (for example, rejecting the West Indies Federation), the predominantly Indo-Guyanese Jagan PPP won the 1957 elections. After his defeat in 1957, Burnham shifted from class to racial politics as well, attracting the Afro-Guyanese middle classes which had supported moderate parties in the 1950s, and bringing them under the PNC fold using racial politics. The 1957, 1961 and 1964 elections - the first two won by the Jagan PPP - were turbulent affairs fraught with racial tensions and rioting. Although more radical ideas (nationalization) were held in check by the British, Jagan's PPP government was friendly with the Eastern Bloc states and revolutionary Cuba, while at home it again tried to push a labour relations bill favourable to its union ally (GIWU/GAWU), sparking riots and two declarations of states of emergency by the British. In 1964, the PPP won the most seats, but the PNC formed a majority coalition with the small (4 seats) United Front, a conservative party tied to the Catholic Church and representing indigenous, Chinese, and Portuguese voters.

The PNC would rule Guyana until 1992. Initially moderate and conciliatory, Burnham led the country towards independence in 1966. In control of government machinery, the increasingly authoritarian PNC used fraud and coercion to win ever-larger supermajorities in the rigged 1968, 1973, 1980 and 1985 elections. After 1968, Burnham governed alone and shifted hard left, announcing that he would move Guyana to socialism and declaring the country a republic in 1970, with a program of 'cooperative socialism' emphasizing self-reliance, state ownership of the economy. It supported national liberation movements in southern Africa and was friendly with Cuba; at home, the PNC intimidated opponents and effectively merged party and state, particularly after the PNC was declared the paramount party in 1974 -- although opposition parties, including the marginalized PPP, were tolerated and ran in elections. For a while, Jagan cooperated with his rival's regime. Burnham's idea of 'cooperative socialism' apparently included fanatical murderous cults, as his government at the least tolerated the presence of the Jonestown cult (and looked pretty bad after the massacre). Burnham's 'socialism' also bankrupted the country - public services, infrastructure, living standards, electricity supply and running water all turned to garbage, the country was forced to import rice and sugar, the illegal parallel economy thrived as the formal economy sank; for a period in the 1980s, Guyana was as poor as Haiti by continental standards, and the country's population decreased with emigration (from 760,000 to 723,000). After Burnham's death in 1985, he was succeeded by vice president Desmond Hoyte, who won another rigged election in 1985. He shifted away from Burnham's disastrous socialism, embracing the private sector, renouncing nationalization (a moot point by then) and strengthened ties with the United States.

The PPP won the first democratic elections in 1992, with Cheddi Jagan, by now a tamer septuagenarian, becoming president, until his death in 1997. His widow, Janet Jagan, became president following the PPP's reelection in 1997, but she died in 1999. She was succeeded by Bharrat Jagdeo, who led the PPP to breezy reelections in 2001 and 2006. He appears to have been mildly competent and somewhat successful in his presidency, taking advantage of generally strong economic growth and high gold prices to make investments in infrastructure and social spending, achieving an improvement in living conditions, although Guyana remains a very poor country with something like 20% unemployment. The PPP claims to have inherited a catastrophic situation and bankrupt country under IMF supervision in 1992, and credits itself with restoring the country's economy. On the other hand, drug trafficking has proliferated, criminality increased and the PPP developed autocratic tendencies, one flagrant example being its failure to organize local elections since 1994. The PPP did little to ease racial tensions (neither did the opposition, led until the 2000s by former president Hoyte), and elections continue to be tense periods. In 1997, for example, the PNC cried foul and rioted for weeks after its defeat.

Jagdeo did not seek reelection in 2011, and the PPP's presidential candidate was Donald Ramotar, who had been groomed for the job by his predecessor. The PNC allied with four small irrelevant parties in the 'A Partnership for National Unity' (APNU) coalition, led by retired military officer David Granger. The multiracial Alliance for Change (AFC) was a third force. The PPP's manifesto's cover was this wonderful psychedelic montage:

[Hash]

The PPP won 32 seats but the opposition had a majority between APNU (26) and AFC (7). However, under Guyana's constitution only states that the presidential candidate of the party which won the most votes is automatically deemed elected, which is ridiculous. Between a president who didn't have a parliamentary majority, and a parliamentary majority which didn't control the executive, nothing got done between 2011 and 2014, as everybody kept blocking each other's bills. In November 2014, Ramotar prorogued Parliament to escape a confidence vote he would have lost (hello Stephen Harper), and finally called early elections in February 2015 (the election was held in May).

The opposition APNU and AFC didn't make the same mistake twice, and ran a single list. The governing PPP, with the truly original slogan of "GUYANA VERSION 2.0", said that everything was going well and laid out of laundry list of meaningless fluff (united country can reach new heights in peace and harmony! beacon of environmental stewardship for the rest of the world! poverty is eliminated! a gateway to South America and a hub for markets to the North and South! world class healthcare and education! Guyana can into space!). It's worth noting that, despite sending somebody to the "International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties" as recently as 2012, the PPP isn't even trying to appear socialist/communist anymore. Sadly, their manifesto's cover was far less exciting than in 2011, and appears to have been the product of some pretty sweet Microsoft Word 1997 WordArt:



In stark contrast, the opposition APNU+AFC alliance basically said that Guyana is a complete shithole, basically a narco-state with lawlessness, authoritarianism, corruption, inequalities, drug lords, political death squads, murder, suicide, domestic violence and school dropouts. David Granger, the presidential candidate, said Guyana was an "unhappy country". It is true that Guyana has the world's highest suicide rate. Its platform was a mix of populistic measures (tax cuts, higher pensions), local grievances and valence issues.

The APNU+AFC won 50.3% of the vote and 33 seats, a one-seat majority over the PPP (49.2%, 32 seats). The PPP's vote share increased by a sliver (from 48.6%) and held all its seats; the opposition's victory was only the result of uniting their existing vote base. The third largest party, The United Force, the remnants of that old conservative party of years past (adding an article to its name, because Guyanese parties love articles), won only 0.27%. It appears to be led by some Muslim guy and/or some hot girl and their slogan was the truly inspiring GUYANA NEEDS YOUTH.

[DC Al Fine]

Why does Venezuela want to wipe Guyana off the map?

[Hash]

Why does Venezuela want to wipe Guyana off the map?

I am exaggerating some, but Venezuela claims about three-quarters of Guyanese territory -- all of it west of the Essequibo river. It is one of those still unresolved South American territorial disputes dating back to the colonial period, which successive rounds of foreign arbitration or treaties have failed to resolve. Chávez and Maduro turned the usual sabre-rattling/irredentist trolling up a notch, although they haven't acted on it (besides adding an eight star to the flag in 2006), while Guyana has irked Venezuela by awarding licenses for offshore oil exploration in the disputed territorial waters. This is also like the one issue where both Venezuelan opposition and government agree with one another.

Suriname also claims about 7% of Guyanese territory, out in the boonies, so it definitely appears as if nobody likes poor Guyana (besides Brazil).

edit: Let's also add that, if this was to happen, Venezuela would look weird and Guyana would look like some gerrymandered American congressional district.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

La Nacion has the best electoral maps of Argentina

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/data-elecciones-2015-t52156

[Hash]

Racial map of Cuba

[Sir John Johns]

Presidential elections during the Second Nigerian Republic (1979-1983)

A free and relatively fair (at least according to Nigerian standards) presidential election was held in 1979, the last step in a process to return to democracy after 13 years of military dictatorship. Only five political parties (each one running its own presidential candidate) were allowed. They were constitutionally required to be national organizations; in practice, they were not really different from the regional parties that dominated the political life under the First Republic.

The five presidential candidates were:

Obafemi Awolowo, a Yoruba and a former premier of Western Region (1954-1959), who ran under the banner of the social-democratic Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), which was in all but name the successor of the Yoruba-dominated Action Group.

Nnamdi Azikiwe, ‘Zik’, an Igbo who served as premier of the Eastern Region (1954-1959) and became in 1960 the ceremonial head of state of Nigeria (serving first as governor-general and from 1963 until the 1966 coup as president). Zik ran as the candidate of the nominally center-left Nigerian People’s Party (NPP), the successor of the southeast-based National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons.

Shehu Shagari, a Fulani from the northern state of Sokoto, who hold various ministerial portfolios under both the First Republic and the military dictatorship. Shagari ran as the candidate of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), the successor organization of the Northern People’s Congress.

Waziri Ibrahim, a Kanuri from the northern state of Borno and a wealthy businessman, ran as the candidate of the Great Nigerian People’s Party (GNPP), basically a northerner splinter group from the NPP that was founded after the latter party nominated Zik over Ibrahim as its presidential candidate.

Aminu Kano, a native from the Kano State, who ran as the candidate of the leftist People’s Redemption Party (PRP), the successor party of the Northern Elements Progressive Union. The PRP was considered as the most radical of the five parties, as it advocated a mixed economy.

National results were:
Shehu Shagari (NPN) 33.6%
Obafemi Awolowo (UPN) 29.3%
Nnamdi Azikiwe (NPP) 16.8%
Aminu Kano (PRP) 10.3%
Waziri Ibrahim (GNPP) 10.1%




Note: apparently, Abuja voters voted in Niger, in Plateau, or in Kwara.

Like under the First Republic, the vote largely continued to split along ethnic lines, with the NPN emerging as the only true national party. Thus, Awolowo swept the Southwest, winning the Yoruba-populated states by huge margins: 92.6% in his native Ogun, 94.5% in Ondo, 85.8% in Oyo, and 82.3% in Lagos. He also won the Bendel State with 52.2%. Similarly, Azikiwe got, by far, his best results in the Igbo-populated states of Anambra (82.9%) and Imo (86.7%); for some reason, he also won the Plateau state with 50.2%. The results of Shagari are more interesting as he managed to build a multi-ethnic coalition between the northerner Hausa-Fulani  (65.2% in Sokoto, 75.4% in Niger, 62.5% in Bauchi) and the southeastern minorities who feared a possible regional hegemony of the Igbos (72.7% in Rivers, 76.4% in Benue, 64.4% in Cross River). Kano only won his native state with 77.7% and did poorly in the rest of the country, with the noticeable exceptions of Kaduna (31.7%) and Bauchi (14.3%). Ibrahim won his native Borno state with 54.1% but, similarly to Kano, did very poorly in the southern part of the country, with the exception of Cross River where he won 15.1%.

In the aftermath, there was a huge constitutional dispute about whether Shagari met the legal requirements (“not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the States”) to be declared president in the first round. In a controversial move, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Shagari who became the first, and only, president of the Second Republic.

The 1983 presidentiall election was basically a re-run of the 1979 election with the same candidates minus Kano who died shortly before the election and was replaced by Hassan Yusuf, and with a sixth, irrelevant, candidate, Tunji Braithwaite, running for the left-wing southern-based Nigeria Advance Party (NAP). The election was however marred by violence and massive fraud (the number of voters unbelievably increased from 16.8 million in 1979 to 25.4 million) in favor of incumbent president Shagari, by now fairly unpopular due to massive corruption and economic downturn. Fraud seems the most plausible of the collapse of the two other northerner candidates.

National results were:
Shehu Shagari (NPN) 47.5%
Obafemi Awolowo (UPN) 31.1%
Nnamdi Azikiwe (NPP) 14.0%
Hassan Yusuf (PRP) 3.8%
Waziri Ibrahim (GNPP) 2.5%
Tunji Braithwaite (NAP) 1.1%



The proclamation of the results led to such an outbreak of violence that the army overthrew Shagari in December 1983 and took power. Civilian rule would only be restored in 1999.