This is what neoliberalism ignoring the needs of anyone who isn’t a billionaire for couple of decades gets you.
Well, that and the political left selling out.
I’m saddened by the result. I wonder what the cause is for this.
Idiocy and xenophobia.
I don’t know the causes, but dark times lie ahead of us.
Lots of reports of massive funding by Russia in influence campaigns.
Is this why people say Putin is evil smart? While making mistakes, it doesn’t matter in the large scheme of screwing with the opponent
Putin is a former KGB agent. He’s good at the things that the KGB were good at, because that’s how he was trained. Foreign influence is one of those things that he’s very good at thanks to that training, and Russia has been good at for a very long time, actually. So it’s kind of one of Russia’s core competencies.
Looks like Russia influenced the bigger countries more and got far right in. Meanwhile Nordics had cleaner elections and Leftists rose the most
You could have told me this is is the current layout of Israel’s Knesset and I would have believed you.
Proportional representation only looks good from the perspective of a spreadsheet. As soon as power dynamics enters the picture it doesn’t look so good anymore.
The biggest problem with “first past the post” is the name. Politics works when people are able to compromise. Requiring that a representative is at least able to compromise enough to get the majority of votes in their community is useful for weeding out the weirdos who are incapable of compromise. Any democracy can become two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner, but in a proportional representation this result is significantly more likely. There’s no one in a the “Identity and Democracy” that has to compromise to get a few more votes to get past that post, right? Just as the Left and Green parties can have 100% uncompromising dedication to the causes they care about, so can the other side. And if that side forms a coalition, the concerns of minorities won’t be addressed as minorities have zero power when not in the coalition.
Well, you never know… whatever coalition that forms after you vote might not be be as extreme right as the one that formed in Israel. Cross your fingers, and hope for a good outcome from the backroom deals to form a coalition that you have no say over. And if the worst happens and you have a far right coalition running the EU, at least the numbers line up on the spreadsheet and you got to vote for a niche party that didn’t have to compromise!
I think that the difference between PR and FPTP (or other majoritarian systems) is that in the former, compromise happens on the floor of the parliament, whereas in the latter, compromise happens in voters’ minds.
In PR the compromises all happen in the backroom deal to form a coalition. After that they have the votes they need and don’t really need to care about anyone that’s outside the coalition.
In FPTP I can call my MP and complain. I’m not one out of tens of millions of votes, I’m one out of thousands of votes. A small group of people in a riding can make the MP pay attention because they could lose their job if they don’t. We influence the MP, the MP influences the party. And the party needs to listen to the MP because the seat doesn’t belong to the MP, it belongs to the MP. The MP could cross the floor, go independent, or even join another party, and the party loses a seat. The power dynamics flow up from the people. The people can remove the MP and the MP can take away a little bit of power from the party.
In PR, the MP exists only for show. After the election that party has X% of the vote and has X% of the seats. The job of the MP is dependent on sucking up to the party leadership. They will vote for or against what they’re told to by the party leadership, so what’s the point of them? Just have the party leaders there and when they vote for, X% of the vote is for the legislation. Or conducts it like a courtroom, the parties hire the best advocates they can find to read the rationale for voting for against a piece of legislation.
PR has legislative assemblies only to provide a show of representation, put people in those seats don’t represent anyone except their party.
The proof is in the pudding. Israel, EU, both PR systems, both susceptible to far-right coalition politics. The UK on the other hand will soon have a center-left government while the rest of Europe will be under the far-right influence of the EU parliament. A hard Brexit was a mistake, but what’s going on now only has the EU proving idiots like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage to be right. I mean Nigel Farage ever being a MEP only proved what a clown show a PR parliament is.
These are actually some very good arguments. What is your opinion on reforms to majoritarian voting auch as RCV?
I kinda like ranked choice, but there are downsides to it. It’s more complicated to count votes but that’s manageable. But there is something to be said for having vote counting be simple enough that there is no doubt about the winner.
Many people may have difficulty with thinking in any kind of abstract way. Yeah it seems relatively trivial just to number candidates from most favoured to least favoured, but a lot of people will struggle with this.
A system like France’s run-off system for president seems ideal to me. It’s simple and having some time between the first vote and the second vote to discuss and debate (and just think about) which of the final two candidates is the best is valuable. No need for abstract thought and counting the votes is simple and less likely to be disputed (though that can happen even in a simple system a la Trump).
But it’s expensive to have two rounds of voting for every election on every level. So ranked choice works well enough when having two rounds of voting isn’t feasible. I mean no system is ever going to be ideal, but gotta pick the best of the imperfect options.
Can we take a moment to consider that everything is the fault of the Italians. The Italians, and only the Italians:
Why the hell are your polling stations open until 23:00? Who the hell votes at that time? Is it one of those “not cappuccino after 11 – no voting before dusk” kind of superstitions? You’re the reason we don’t have proper projections yet!
Considering the next elections one should form a national party to expand pause times to multiple hours as well, so that we can bear 35 degree celcius in april 2029.
Either spains siesta approach or adapting italias layed-back attitude both sounds promising!!
Italy has taken in a lot of refugees and will thus probably have rather high right wing voter turnout.
Why the hell are your polling stations open until 23:00?
That’s just barely in time to vote after dinner!
Then vote after your morning espresso!
Or like me: Go to vote whenever, visit the Italian ice cream parlour on the way back.
I was just in Rome, and when I started getting hungry there was still an hour left until most restaurants even opened (19:30). Pure insanity to my Scandinavian habits.
I was in Stockholm and I felt horribly when I started feeling hungry and I noticed restaurants were already closing 😂
You want to make it harder to vote just to get faster unofficial projections?
We’re already done counting. They’re actively not updating the results because the Italians can’t be bothered to vote during daytime. On a Sunday.
EDIT: State results are in. Well, almost completely.
Oh look Europe is fascist, I’m so surprised. /s
Signed, an unsurprised Indigenous person.
Get your fucking shit together guys, Jesus Christ.
As a European myself, idk why people are downvoting you
Young voters did this, ironically enough, according to BBC World News. Young people struggling to get jobs after graduation think that right wing parties will fix that.
So as older generations are trying not to hand-off a burning planet to the young, the young are signing up for a burning planet under some delusion that right wingers will get them jobs. Schools have apparently failed to teach kids that the jobs they get under conservative governance are shit jobs – lousy pay and lousy benefits.
The Nazi Party’s popularity increased in the early 1930s partly because of its pledge to do what no other political party had been able to accomplish: pull Germany out of the Great Depression and put Germans back to work.
put Germans back to work
Well they weren’t wrong … :-/
They did it by putting women out of work
Look at all those parties! The American mind struggles to comprehend this.
And those are just the party coalitions, where the different national parties that are sent from all 27 countries form groups based on common agendas
Wonderful
I know! It looks like a fkn rainbow!
As a latent American, apparently, I also struggle to make sense of it (I’m planning to research those parties, but haven’t gotten to it yet)
Also, naming of parties seems often misleading, maybe even on purpose
Could you recommend some resources I can use for a crash course on who’s who in EP, or maybe someone can summarise the projected results and what are the expected problems?
Traditionally, the EU has been governed by an informal coalition of the two largest groups/parties, centre-right EPP and centre-left S&D, both being pro-EU. After the last election where they underperformed, they were joined by the third largest group, centrist, pro-EU Renew.
This election, pro-EU groups collectively have lost a lot of seats while right-wing EU-sceptic groups gained seats. The most radical of these groups, ID, made the biggest gains. This will make coalition building and therefore governing way more complicated.
European parties are alliances of national parties from various member states. Those representatives elected to the European Parliament for the national parties form so called groups. Typically, these groups correspond to the European parties. Usually, it makes more sense to talk about the groups rather than the parties.
These political groups are formed by members elected by national voters. A group can be formed as long as they have at least 25 members from at least one quarter of EU countries. They’re pretty much analogous to a party, they work in broadly the same way. In the Image above they’re broadly organised from Left to Right politically:
The LEFT group is, well, pretty left. They include Communists and Socialists, and in their own way can be a bit eurosceptic, although they typically want to reform or replace the EU rather than just disbanding it.
The GREENS are also pretty left, with a focus on Climate, Animal Rights, Income Equality, Feminism, that sort of thing. They are generally pro-Europe.
The S&D group are center left. Members tend to be from say, the Labour party of various countries. They want things like fairer employment and more regulated market. They were the largest party in the EU until 1999, now the second largest.
RENEW are Center, pretty Liberal (in the Phil Ochs sense). They’re pro-business and want a strong economy, but they at least talk up things like civil rights and social welfare (I don’t know enough about them to judge how well they do in practise). They’re very pro-EU, and have billed themselves as ‘the Pro-European political group’.
The EPP are center-right, pretty conservative. Lots of ‘Christian Democratic’ representation. Neoliberal, want more defence spending, pro-Europe, pro-Ukraine. They say they’re focused on the climate, but the Greens say that that’s a lie. They’ve been the biggest group since 1999.
The ECR calls itself center-right (but is really a bit right-er), and ‘soft-eurosceptic’. This Eurosceptism is their main thing: They support the idea of the EU, so they say, but they want to prevent it from going ‘too far’, with too much oversight, integration, and immigration. Some members are your standard conservative types, some are far-right.
The ID group is far-right. They don’t like the EU, and are opposed to it interfering with the ‘sovereignity’ of States. Anti-immigration, anti-‘islamisation’, pro-nationalism.
Nonaligned (technically ‘non-inscrits’) are just that - they haven’t joined with any of the above blocs.
These projected results broadly show increased support for the right over the left, but more sharply show gains for the Eurosceptic ID and Non-Inscrits (who often are Eurosceptic, but not always and I don’t actually know the individual cases here) at the expense of the pro-EU Greens and Renew. So it doesn’t look great for fans of the European Left.
Thanks, it looks like the right are really on the rise as of lately, I heard about this happening in the Netherlands, in Spain, now the EP :(
Also, I hope we’re not going to see another Brexit(s), especially considering how the UK citizens seem now to think it was a mistake
Portugal is also sending for the first time our dear fascists to the europe. It’s all imploding in our lifetimes.
While I am all for laughing at the 'Muricans for making themselves out to be the prime democratic nation on the planet while having the choice between a conservative and an ultra-conservative party only, this time, we cannot indulge in this kind of thing to feel superior. We need to make sure we actually stay superior now, which… isn’t a given anymore.
‘Haha you guys only have the choice between conservative and far-right’
only elects conservatives and far-right
-us europeans rn
Yep…
The 2nd biggest fraction is center-left, and the third is mostly-center (although one might argue that one quite a lot)
Centrism is your feudal lord agreeing that serfs have rights.
That one hurts.
I don’t know about EU politics but how are conservatives reformists? (I should mention that I am honestly asking)
Along the lines of “Reform the EU to strengthen national authority”
Comedic answer: In the same way, “Republicans” are standing for “State’s Rights” instead of the rights of the Federal Republic: By name only. Real answer: It’s all around the idea that to keep the EU “in check” and nation states sovereign (which is their main deal, aside from ‘controlled immigration’ as they call their specific flavor of Xenophobia), the EU needs to be reformed into a more powerless organization basically.
The growth of the far right isn’t that terrible on a vacuum, since it’s just a small growth anyway. The real bad news is this:
This is, traditional conservative parties starting to talk about cooperation with the far right, rather than with centrists. If you thought far right euroskeptics were cringe, just you wait to see the far right that wants to remodel the EU to their taste - and are capable of passing reforms.
Wow, who woulda thunk that the right would ally with the far right in policy :0
Disgusting.
We’re speedrunning the collapse of civilization. And people are only getting dumber. Don’t worry, it’s all gonna be over soon.
Everyone complaining about the right wing people should take another look at the +40 to 102 non aligned seats.
Those votes went to parties exploring interesting new directions instead of 1) evil or 2) boring old stuff.
afaik German AFD is now part of non aligned. That’s 16 of those +40 seats.
You’re right. They were a bit to open about how Nazi they really are.
Too Nazi for the EU Nazi block
sadly that won’t stop people from voting for them
Wait, like what?
It just so utterly damn aweful. I got a frog in my neck.
What unsettles me that the EPP plus everything right of it have a majority. The right have a majority in the parliament, and the EPP’s centrism is the only think saving us from it.
☠️
