European parliament election

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As for Wilders ... in the context of his stay in the US: Wilders is getting support and money from US neo-con affiliated organisations. That doesn't explain his party's success, but it's noteworthy as far as ideologies (or interests) go. Personally I think Wilders was anti-Muslim and when he started to get publicity they approached and started supporting him, or the other way around, he started to get flak and needed friends. The neo-cons need someone from outside to support their own message (The Islamofascist hordes are at the gates!), and Wilders needs all the friends he can get. Neo-cons present Wilders as a martyr of free speech, and 'a great leader seeing the great peril posed by Islam'. It is natural that the two gravitate towards each other. And nobody has ever accused the neo-ons of being picky in choosing their allies (or enemies).

Still, I don't feel comfortable about it, and not because it happens to involve neo-cons. Political entities from abroad supporting parties in other nations are problematic. It's not only a one way street - the US would have hard time accepting, say, Mexican support for a Latino party in the US, with the argument that this is about foreign influence taking in internal US politics. It also doesn't prevent themselves from supporting parties in other countries.

That said, I did my civic duty and voted today. I think about volunteering for helping in the federal election. Anyway, election results in Germany have Christian Democrats leading, then Social Democrats, Liberal party and the Greens and the Left.

 

It looks like conservatives are winning big. Of course I find it interesting that the AP seems to paint the conservatives as racists. To me that is an awfully broad brush.

Spoilered for length

Spoiler

BRUSSELS – Conservatives scored victories in some of Europe's largest economies Sunday as voters punished left-leaning parties in European parliament elections in France, Germany and other nations.

Some right-leaning parties said the results vindicated their reluctance to spend more on company bailouts and fiscal stimulus to combat the global economic crisis.

The European Union said center-right parties were expected to take the most seats — 267 — in the 736-member parliament. Center-left parties were headed for 159 seats. The remainder were expected to go to smaller groupings.

Right-leaning governments were ahead of the opposition in Germany, France, Italy and Belgium, while conservative opposition parties were leading in Britain and Spain.

Greece was a notable exception, where the governing conservatives were headed for defeat in the wake of corruption scandals and economic woes.

Germans handed a lackluster victory to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and a historic defeat to their center-left rivals in the European Parliament vote months before a national election.

The Social Democrats got an unexpectedly dismal 20.8 percent — the party's worst showing since World War II in any nationwide election.

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and a regional sister party won 37.8 percent, down from 44.5 percent five years ago. But the outcome was enough to boost Merkel's hopes of ending the tense left-right "grand coalition" that has led the European Union's most populous nation since 2005, and replacing it with a center-right government.

"We are the force that is acting level-headedly and correctly in this financial and economic crisis," said Volker Kauder, the leader of Merkel's party in the German parliament.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's governing conservatives trounced the Socialists, while an ecology-minded party vaulted to a surprisingly strong third place, according to official results.

The Socialists, who dominated the last vote in 2004, suffered a stinging defeat, barely clinging to the No. 2 spot.

"Tonight is a very difficult evening for Socialists in many nations in Europe," said Martin Schulz, the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament. "(We will) continue to fight for social democracy in Europe."

Far-right groups and other fringe parties gained in record low turnout estimated at 43.5 percent of 375 million eligible, reflecting widespread disenchantment with the continentwide legislature.

Britain elected its first extreme-right politician to the European Parliament, with the British National Party winning a seat in northern England's Yorkshire and the Humber district.

The far-right party, which does not accept nonwhites as members, was expected to possibly win further seats as more results in Britain were announced.

Lawmakers with Britain's major political parties said the far right's advance was a reflection of anger over immigration issues and the recession that is causing unemployment to soar.

Near-final results showed Austria's main rightist party gaining strongly while the ruling Social Democrats lost substantial ground. But the big winner was the rightist Freedom Party, which more than doubled its strength over the 2004 elections to 13.1 percent of the vote. It campaigned on an anti-Islam platform.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' anti-Islamic party took 17 percent of the country's votes, taking four of 25 seats.

The Hungarian far-right Jobbik party won three of 22 seats, with the main center-right opposition party, Fidesz, capturing 14 seats and the governing Socialists only four.

Jobbik describes itself as Euro-skeptic and anti-immigration and wants police to crack down on petty crimes committed by Gypsies. Critics say the party is racist and anti-Semitic.

Fringe groups could use the EU parliament as a platform for their extreme views but were not expected to affect the assembly's increasingly influential lawmaking on issues ranging from climate change to cell-phone roaming charges.

The EU parliament has evolved over five decades from a consultative legislature to one with the power to vote on or amend two-thirds of all EU laws. Lawmakers get five-year terms and residents vote for lawmakers from their own countries.

The parliament can also amend the EU budget — euro120 billion ($170 billion) this year — and approves candidates for the European Commission, the EU administration and the board of the European Central Bank.

Many Socialists ran campaigns that slammed center-right leaders for failing to rein in financial markets and spend enough to stimulate faltering economies.

"People don't want a return to socialism and that's why the majority here will be a center-right majority," said Graham Watson, leader of the EU's center-right Liberal Democrat grouping.

In Spain, the conservative Popular Party won two more seats than the ruling Socialists — 23 to 21 seats — with over 88 percent of the vote counted.

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi's Freedom People's Party held a two-digit lead over his main center-left rival in the most recent polling despite a deep recession and a scandal over allegations he had an inappropriate relationship with a young model. Italian results were being released Monday.

In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was facing a showdown with rebel lawmakers on Monday after the party's expected dismal results in the European parliament and local elections were announced.

Brown has been struggling with the economic crisis and a scandal over lawmakers' expenses. The opposition Conservatives are expected to win the next national election, which must be called by June 2010.

According to a BBC projection, Labour was trailing the United Kingdom Independence Party in third place. It put the main opposition Conservative Party at 27 percent, UKIP at 17 and Labour at 16, followed by smaller parties.

"This time we have come second in a major national election. That is a hell of an achievement," said Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP — which advocates Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.

An exit poll showed Irish ruling party Fianna Fail, which supports EU plans to strengthen its authority, trailing its rival Fine Gael by 23 percent to 30 percent.

The outcome of many Irish races was unclear early Monday. The count was halted for an hour Sunday night in Ireland's North West EU constituency after candidate Declan Ganley, founder of anti-treaty party Libertas, raised procedural questions about the opening of ballot boxes.

An exit poll in Poland showed Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-business Civic Platform party with 45.3 percent and the nationalist and conservative opposition Law and Justice party second with 29.5 percent — a shift to the center-right for Poland at the European parliament.

The Democratic Left Alliance-Labor Union garnered 12 percent.

In Sweden, the Pirate Party, which advocates shortening the duration of copyright protection and allowing noncommercial file-sharing, looked set to take its first seat with 7.4 percent of the vote.

Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and five other EU nations cast ballots over the last three days, while the rest of the 27-nation bloc voted Sunday.

 

It definitely would be, though I did not find such an allegation in the article. While Christian-democrats and far-right radicals are both technically on the right, they seldom get along that well. There is some blurring, of course - the EPP is a wide formation including both "traditional" conservatives, populists and a few people who can be classified as fringe right members. Still, radical right MEPs, as was the case with our Ataka party, often strike it on their own or try to make their own formation. From what I know the center-right cooperates much more readily with the center-left than with the extreme right-wingers.

However, it is true that the far right also made some gains in a few countries, and will be at least as well represented in the next Parliament as it was in the old one. I think the low turnout - iirc the lowest so far - benefited the fringe parties, who appeared to have a more motivated electorate. I would expect that most radicals would try to join into a parliamentary group of their own - this would give them much more visibility and better representation in the various committees (which is where much of the actual work gets done), and possibly (though I expect the other MEPs will try to block them ) in the Commission. For now, however, a lot of them are labeled as independents, which makes the UEN and the independent democrats smaller than in the outgoing Parliament. You can check the graph at http://www.elections2009-results.eu/en/index_en.html , by the way.

BTW, an update in the results from our elections - it turns out that it the pseudo-liberal NDSV got 300 more votes than the center-right "Blue coalition", so it will get 2 MEP seats rather than one; the "blues" will get only the leader of their list in. This means Bulgaria will give 5 seats to the ALDE (liberal centrists) and 6 to the EPP, rather than 4 and 7, respectively.

 

Snook,
Shaman, is right. Conflating the Christian-Democrats with the far right is misleading. The CD's are center-right. What we generally refer to in Europe as the right is in fact mostly the far right. Topics they typically focus (solely) on are: Nationalism or Regionalism and correspondingly anti-Europeanism; they're anti-immigration and protectionist.

The real free marketeers you find typically in the liberal parties and the centre parties (which may also include, to an extent, social-democrats, depending how far centre they gravitate at a given time in a given country), or, interestingly, in more modern parties like Germany's Greens, who also stress individual responsibility. We Euros are a diverse bunch.

 

I think it has been said before but the ones that is generally called conservatives in Europe tend to have more in common with those called liberals in the US than the American conservatives. Much of what Americans call conservatism is what is often called the "extreme right" in Europe.

The European "centre" lies somewhere in the middle of the American Democratic party in my estimation. Most leading Democrats would be considered "right" in Europe.

 

Still no final results from Ireland, we're waiting on one seat from an election held on Friday. It's only on about the fifth count. Stupid EU wouldn't allow us to start counting till Sunday. What's with the Dutchies announcing their results on Friday? Blatant Chaotic Evil behavior! We'll have to round up some paladins to deal with them. Maybe I could export my one from IWD.

 

That's the last thing we need; more foreign imports saturating the market (or would paladins just hack the banks to pieces?). Do paladins on missions count as foreign labour?

 

Well, he's white and seems to speak English for some reason despite not living on planet earth so I guess this qualifies him as a foreigner but not one of those nasty immigrants the BNP don't like.

Anybody who registers under detect evil goes, so I guess that's bankers and politicians and whichever bureaucrats were trying to influence the rest of Europe by releasing their results early.

Anybody else still waiting on results?

 

I find the comment about Greens interesting because I would have guessed they would be calling for more government sponsored regulations on pollution.

Note I don't think regulations are a bad thing I was just surprised because some laisee faire advocates complain government regulations are hinderances.

 

Of course they do, but they're also about rigorously enforcing existing regulation. They also lead a jihad against nuclear power. The point is that, pollution aside, their economic and social program is remarkably liberal. That's for German Greens, anyway.

 

Actually, there are two "green" formations in the EP. Apart from the liberal Greens-EFA there is also a strongly left-wing formation called Nordic Green Left, which is generally to the left of the PES. They seem to be more socialist than green, but do have an eco-friendly agenda. I am not quite sure how much they cooperate with the other Green party in the EP - I presume that they work together on environmental issues, but not always on social ones. Most EP groups are imo notably less strict than national parties, so MEPs have a bit more freedom.

 

The Irish results finally came in. The three main parties make up the bulk of seats, with the main government party faring badly. Thankfully most of the crackpots elected last time around weren't reelected. The IRA linked candidates did ok but they lost the seat they held without getting another one. One hard left candidate was elected, though he's one of the better ones of that sort. As long as noone lets him make any policies things will be grand.

We had local elections as well which saw the government parties absolutely decimated, owing to their abysmal handling of the economy (world downturn accepted) and their culture of cronism. Though one of the guys who did hold his seat (indeed he topped the poll for his area) was 'The Stroke' Fahey. The highlight of his previous term in office was going to jail for a couple of months for stealing council funds. You really do have to wonder at the mindset of people who are prepared to vote people like him back in.

 

As an American, I am not greatly interested in this election, but I just have to say---

"Arrr - I cannae believe the pirate party won 7% of the vote and a parliamentary seat matey!"

 

It seems the right wing has won overall. Here, it's the Civic Platform (51% or so), a liberal party that gets classified as Christian-Democratic but I'd rather the other right wing party won. Those other guys are kinda right-wing socialists if you can fathom something like that exists. The other guys, Law and Justice, are basically conservatives that spread the core across the board rather than just on the business, of which the Civic Platform is accused. As far as I go, I tend to name them the Pinks. Not quite the Reds, but dangerously close to them in many things. The Law and Justice guys seem to be somewhat akin to the British Conservative Party. I actually voted for an offshot headed by a former Law and Justice dignitary. They have more decided views and use a more gentlemanly style. Unfortunately, they got 3.8%.

 

No we are not chaotic evil, we are CHAOTIC neutral.

 

Yeah, that's what they all say. Have you by any chance watched any of the Gamers movies recently?