I don’t usually follow European Parliament elections all that closely. But this year’s were rather interesting–particularly in the not-quite-Brexited-yet UK.
So, if folks want to discuss, here’s the place…
Category Archives: EU
So now where for Brexit?
I spent far too much of my spring break listening to debates from the UK House of Commons. And even though I heard almost everything that was said today, I am still not sure what happened. Or, rather, what it means for next week and beyond.
What do folks around the virtual orchard think is going to happen?
UK politics: Now what?
To say it has been an interesting, even tumultuous, week in UK politics would be an understatement. As readers of this blog are quite likely aware, earlier this week the PM, Theresa May, called off the “meaningful vote” on the Brexit deal her government and the EU had negotiated. A day later she survived an internal party no-confidence vote, which revealed that those who want her not to remain Conservative Party leader amount to 37% of the caucus.
So, what happens next, both for her government and for the Brexit process?
I am interested in the expectations and assessments of readers of this blog.
As an aide, I was just looking at what I said when the results of May’s snap election in 2017 were known.
What will it mean for policy, especially Brexit? I can’t claim to know! But the DUP does not want a “hard border” with the Republic of Ireland, and that implies a “softer” Brexit. On the other hand, if the main motivation May had in calling the election was to boost her standing against restive members of her own caucus who want a harder Brexit, she failed. It will not be easy governance or policy-making for May or an intraparty successor.
I guess that much still stands as of this week. Especially the first two sentences.
The Brexit cycle
EDIT: the pollster has corrected an error. May’s deal is a Condorcet winner after all (i.e., it would beat either of the other options in one-on-one competition.) The Delta Poll blog post about the poll has been corrected, without any indication of the previous error, although its author did note the error on Twitter. The first pie diagram in the image has the numbers reversed.
_______original post below
Sometimes it just really is awesome to be a political scientist. You see, we have a large literature on the theoretical problem of preference cycles. But they don’t ever happen in real life, right?
Or we could depict it the following way, which makes clearer why it is called a “cycle”:
Brexit vs. BC-STV: Help with my principles!
As I noted earlier, I happened to be in British Columbia while the British were voting to leave the EU.
[Note: If you want to make general comments on Brexit and what happens next, please comment at the earlier thread. I’d like to keep this one on the narrower topic raised here.]
I never liked the BC-STV vote having been “defeated” in 2005 despite a clear majority (57%), due to a threshold of 60% having been set. But I do not like the UK “mandate” to leave the EU by a vote of 51.9%.
Is there a principle that reconciles my two positions? Or do I just have no principles regarding referendums*, and assess the rules for passage by whether I like what is being proposed? Help, please!
(I have written about referendum approval thresholds before.)
________
* Other than that, in general, I’d rather not have them. I rather like representative democracy and deliberative institutions.
Brexit (open planting hole)
I was in British Columbia during the Brexit vote (for both a vacation, and a public forum on Canadian federal electoral-system reform). So no time for a full post. But by popular demand**, here’s a discussion opportunity for F&V readers. Clearly, the outcome raises a whole host of F&V-relevant issues…
________
* About which, more later
** I might note that Brexit reminds one that following the popular demand can be risky sometimes.
Bulgarian preference-voting surprises
For its election of MEPs last month, Bulgaria switched to a system that allowed for preference voting. The Sofia Globe reports that the system produced surprises for a couple of parties.
According to a document I have from the European Parliament* for the 2014 elections, Bulgaria’s system permits one candidate preference, and if a candidate obtains 15% of the list’s valid votes, that candidate moves to the top of the list. In the Globe article, it is noted that the Bulgarian Socialist Party leader was bumped by “a hitherto obscure candidate” originally ranked 15th on the list. Something similar happened to the Reformist Bloc, which is an alliance of parties and the one MEP they will send is from a small partner in the alliance.
_______
* Wilhem Lehman, The European elections: EU legislation, national provisions, and civic participation. Policy Department C – Citizens’ RIghts and Constitutional Affairs. 2014.
The impact of M=96 and no legal threshold
The decision of the German Constitutional Court to invalidate the legal threshold for election of MEPs has been predictably consequential. Given the single 96-seat district, a very large number of parties has won at least one seat, and some have won with less than 1% of the vote.
There will be thirteen parties (counting the CDU and CSU separately) in the German delegation. Seven of them had less than the former 3% threshold; the biggest of the sub-3% parties had not even quite 1.5%. The German government reports the votes; seats are shown at Wikipedia.
Assuming the Wikipedia list is accurate (and it looks likely to be so), these parties that won representation thanks to the Court ruling are: Free Voters, Pirates, Human Environment Animal Protection, National Democrats (yes, a German neo-Nazi will be in the European Parliament), Family Party, Ecological Democrats, and some outfit called Die PARTEI. The last three of these have vote totals ranging from 0.69% down to 0.63%. The NPD’s vote percentage was 1.03.
Also noteworthy is that the Free Democrats continued their slide, winning only 3.36%. They had just missed the 5% threshold for the federal Bundestag elections last year. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which also had just missed the threshold for the Bundetag won 7.04%.
Russia, Ukraine, and the EU
Recommended interview in Spiegel Online with Timothy Snyder (historian, Yale), Konstanty Gebert (Polish journalist), and Anton Shekhovtsov (Ukrainian political scientist).
No threshold for German MEPs
Apparently it is threshold day at F&V. While Israel may be raising its threshold, Germany will be dramatically lowering its. But only for its members of the European parliament (MEPs).
The Constitutional Court ruled in late February that the existing 3% threshold violated political parties’ rights to equal opportunities.
To the immediate question of why, then, the Bundestag (Germany’s elected chamber of the federal parliament) can have a 5% threshold–which was highly consequential in the most recent election–the Court has a ready answer: the role of the Bundestag is to sustain a government, and so limiting fragmentation is a valid interest. However, the European Parliament has no such role, and so it isn’t.
UK MEP results
Not only did Labour fall below 20% (as the early returns I referenced last night suggested), it barely cleared 15%. It was the UK Independence Party that came in second.
The Conservatives won the plurality, but not much for them to crow about: 27.7% of the vote and 25 seats–which is 36.2%, for a really high “PR” advantage ratio of 1.31.
The biggest gainer in votes within the UK was the Green party (+2.4%).
Table of results by party at BBC (excluding Northern Ireland).
BNP has a seat, Labour may be below 20%
Via the BBC:
The BNP [British National Party] has gained its first MEP in what is shaping up to be an historic Labour defeat in the Euro elections.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham said the BNP win was a “sad moment”. The BNP candidate said it was the “first step to freedom” from EU “dictatorship”.
Labour could be on course to dip below 20% of the vote in what Harriet Harman has called a “very dismal” night.
Ouch.
European elections
Does anyone want to talk about the European Parliament elections? They start tomorrow, and quite apart from the body actually being elected, they could have some pretty significant impacts on certain European countries’ governments.
Where do you stand in the EU?
There is now and EU Profiler that tests where you stand in relation to parties competing for seats in the European Parliament. You may set it to analyze (oops, analyse) parties in one European country, or Europe as a whole. I figured I might as well do the latter, and the result suggests I should move to Spain, where Izquierda Unida is in about an 87% agreement with me (and this in spite of the fact that the Profiler did not ask where I stand on the issue of a “just and democratic electoral law“).
_______
Related: Dr. Sean denies he is a British Liberal Democrat, but learns he is an Estonian Green.
Thread on the European Parliament
The popular demand simply can’t be ignored any longer. Twice in the last week or so, I have had a reader note (one in e-mail and the other on a very old thread that is tangentially related) that I have no thread on the European Parliament.
Now I do. May it be a fertile source for the growth of ideas on an institution about which I know far less than I should.
And never say your Orchardist does not respond to requests.
Fruits and Votes 