What are your favourite ever elections?

[the506]

New Brunswick 1991 is even more interesting, as the PCs remained on life support and the COR party (whose main premise was denying rights to 1/3 of the province) came out of nowhere to become official opposition.

BC 1991 - where a one-liner in a debate sent one party out of their doldrums and another to their death throes

Also, any UK election where the BBC exit poll was dead wrong (1992, 2015) and their pundits have to eat crow at 2 AM.

[seb_pard]

France 2012 (Although it turned out bad)
Portugal 2015 (particularly the outcome after the election!)
UK 2017 (beautiful due to where labour started)
Chile 2006 (personal reasons)

[Vosem]

Favorite election that I personally followed might be the 2010 American midterms, or France 2017 -- ones that I paid a great deal of attention to that had a favorable result, especially if it was in a surprising way. The first election I ever truly followed and invested myself in was the 2008 Republican primaries, so that'll always be special in the way first things are.

For a lot of reasons; because the history of that country is so tragic, because of the heroic figures involved, because the result exposed lies that are still peddled in rich countries, I am very partial to Nicaragua 1990.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Turkey 2002 is obviously an amazing (although ultimately tragic, given what would the resulting government would morph into) example of a political scene utterly remade in a single election. (this is one of my favourites in an "interesting" sense, obviously, as opposed to a good election)

Other candidates for fascinating elections: the Dutch ones where Pim Fortuyn burst onto the scene, the French election where theleft was split in a hundred pieces and inadvertedly caused the Chirac-Le Pen run off and Japan 2009.

[EPG]

I can't believe I forgot the UK 1918 election.

[Leftbehind]

Greek 2012 elections and UK 2017, I suppose.

[jaichind]

One I missed mentioning was 1980 India.  Indira Gandhi wins a 2/3 majority after being left for dead after 1977 and seeing her INC party split twice.  Everyone expected a hung parliament but the result was a shock majority for Indira Gandhi's INC. 

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Croatia Presidential election 2014-2015, Argentina 2015, UK 2015 and 2017.

[Hnv1]

UK 2010

[parochial boy]

UK 2010

Labour did badly and lost

Tories failed to win a majority

Lib Dems completely blew Cleggmania and lost seats

Literally no-one was happy with that one?

[Grand Wizard Lizard of the Klan]

Hungary 2010 and Poland 2015, as they resulted in the two best governments on Earth right now.

lol

[adma]

And yeah, U.K.'s election last year was an absolute trip. Extremely stressful from start to finish, but at least the end result was good.

Count me in as a naysayer re UK '17: not from a partisan standpoint, but (at least outside of Scotland) from a picturesque-psephology standpoint--that is, its being the most boringly binary UK election in eons...

[Hydera]

A lot of these arent my favorite and theres leaders that i disagree with, but im intrigued by the results.

1992(US) - I like how Bill Clinton's electoral vote being X shaped in the eastern seaboard.

2002(France) - For the shear magnitude of its landslide in a Western country.

1984(Canada) - Interesting how much the PC won with a divided left.

1990(US/Pennsylvania) - Governor Casey winning rural/conservative counties in huge numbers even though he did it by being "pro-life" which im against.

1994(Italy) - The previous incumbent parties being thrown out despite being replaced by similar parties ideologically.

1997(UK) - Labour winning so many constituencies that they had 62% of seats.

2006(Brazil) - Lula ended up being corrupt surprise surprise, but the weird part about brazillian elections where it solidified the Northeast voted heavily in the past for the conservative candidate which was really odd to heavily voting for the Center-left candidate is notable. 

[mileslunn]

I would say some of my favourites are:

US 2008 - A massive Democrat win and even did well in some areas they usually don't (they've swung back since.

Canada 2011 - What looked like a major realignment.

Alberta 2008 - PCs gain in Edmonton (where usually weak) and lose in Calgary (usually strong).

UK 2017 - Much closer and more polarized than we usually see.  Made clear where the right vs. left is strongest in UK.

BC 2013 - Biggest pollster miss

Quebec 2007 - A nail biter and looked like a realignment, but wasn't (although may see this happen again this Fall).

[augbell]

Canada 1993, when the Bloc Québécois (independentist) became the official opposition
France 1936, first socialist government (Front Populaire)
US 1948, when middle America showed his support to Roosevelt legacy despite what the media said

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

US 1912 - Teddy Roosevelt takes second place as a Progressive. Republicans only won two states, and a Socialist hit almost 6%. Crazy election.

NZ 1996 is definitely an interesting one due to the advent of MMP.

Alberta 2015 - NDP wins due to the conservative split. They'll get blown out of the water in 2019 though.

Canada 2015 is also interesting due to the Liberal sweep of the Atlantic Provinces.

The 90's elections in Canada are fun (especially 1993, as previously mentioned)

UK 2017 is somewhat interesting, but the maps are kinda boring. As much as I hated UKIP, I'm kinda sad that they never had more than a few seats for the purposes of mapping.

Alberta 1935 was pretty crazy. The incumbent government lost all their seats and won only 11% of the vote. Social Credit won 54% of the vote and 56/63 seats in the legislature just months after its formation, then remained in power until 1971.

I had never heard of that one, but that is very interesting.

[Crumpets]

Ukraine 2004. Also Alabama's special election last year.

[mileslunn]

US 1912 - Teddy Roosevelt takes second place as a Progressive. Republicans only won two states, and a Socialist hit almost 6%. Crazy election.

NZ 1996 is definitely an interesting one due to the advent of MMP.

Alberta 2015 - NDP wins due to the conservative split. They'll get blown out of the water in 2019 though.

Canada 2015 is also interesting due to the Liberal sweep of the Atlantic Provinces.

The 90's elections in Canada are fun (especially 1993, as previously mentioned)

UK 2017 is somewhat interesting, but the maps are kinda boring. As much as I hated UKIP, I'm kinda sad that they never had more than a few seats for the purposes of mapping.

Alberta 1935 was pretty crazy. The incumbent government lost all their seats and won only 11% of the vote. Social Credit won 54% of the vote and 56/63 seats in the legislature just months after its formation, then remained in power until 1971.

I had never heard of that one, but that is very interesting.

1993 is proof that Canada has a deeply sexist culture. /s

Not necessarily as we have had multiple female premiers since.  I would argue it was more unique circumstances that led to the two parties dominated by women being defeated.

PCs: Mulroney government was deeply unpopular and he left with an approval rating in the teens so what happened to them is not too much different than the BC NDP in 2001 or New Brunswick PCs in 1987.  Also the Mulroney coalition was quite fragile.  Quebec hadn't traditionally voted PC, but backed them heavily in 1984 and 1988.  After the failure of Meech Lake Accord most of that vote went over to the Bloc Quebecois.  In the West, many felt he pandered too much to Quebec as well as most came from the right wing of the party and wanted it to be more ideological so they want over to the Reform Party.  In Ontario, the Red Tories swung over to the Liberals due to fatigue while the right wing were angry enough they couldn't vote PC so they went to the Reform Party leading to a right wing split and Liberal sweep of the province.  In Atlantic Canada, the PCs did better than elsewhere but faced a similar wipeout to what Harper saw in 2015 (He only didn't see that across the country as the Harper coalition wasn't blown apart like the Mulroney one).

NDP:  Both BC and Ontario had wildly unpopular NDP governments so that negatively rubbed off on the federal NDP.  Also many wanted to ensure the PCs lost so they went over to the Liberals while a lot in the West especially BC, were blue collar populists so they went over to the Reform Party (similar to your Sanders-Trump or Labour Leave voters).  In Saskatchewan which had a reasonably popular provincial NDP government, the NDP vote didn't implode.  At that time they were largely irrelevant in Atlantic Canada (that came in 1997 under Alexa McDonough), Quebec (that came under Layton in 2011), and Alberta (that came in 2015 under Notley although only provincially so far).

Also BQ and Reform Party in vote totals weren't that far off what the PCs got, the difference is those two were more concentrated so it translated into seats whereas the PCs were spread evenly across the country thus not translating into seats, sort of similar to UKIP vs. SNP in the 2015 British election where you saw a similar thing as UKIP got triple the votes the SNP did, but since SNP was more concentrated they won 59 seats vs. only 1 seat.

[fluffypanther19]

2008 us presidential, 2016 us presidential (just for how surreal it was), 2017 alabama special election, thats all I can think of at this time