Nameless Voice on 21/5/2019 at 22:49
So, the European Parliament elections are taking place this week.
Despite the importance of it in EU-wide (and worldwide) issues, voters in the member states have traditionally used European Parliament elections as protest votes against their national governments and their policies.
There's been a huge upsurge in support for populist parties, both on the right and on the left, often with ultra-nationalist, anti-Europe agendas and thinly-veiled bigotry against people of different nationalities, races, or religions.
Combined with parties with a single-issue agenda who have no interest in contributing to anything else (e.g. the Brexit Party), it seems possible that this upcoming parliament will be mired in even more unproductive MEPs and will further delay action on important issues like Europe-wide coordination against climate change (which is really the single most important issue in Europe, and the world, right now.)
I have no faith in the current parliament, especially after the majority of them voted in the catastrophic Copyright Directive, but I fear that what replaces them may be even worse.
Either way, if you're one of the European TTLGers, make sure to go out and vote this week and try to help steer Europe in the right direction.
Starker on 22/5/2019 at 08:51
"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."
-- John Stuart Mill
Gryzemuis on 22/5/2019 at 10:49
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
... populist parties, both on the right and on the left, ...
Populist parties on the left ?
Can you give me an example ? Which country, which party ?
heywood on 22/5/2019 at 12:04
DiEM25, Croatian Workers' Front and Human Shield, Maintenant le Peuple, M5S?
Not as many as on the right, obviously, but they exist.
Nameless Voice on 22/5/2019 at 12:26
Also Sinn Féin here in Ireland. Nationalist left-wing populists. They're not "new", though, they've been here for ages, and have several MEPs in the outgoing parliament.
I do have to give them some grudging respect for voting against the Copyright Directive, though, and one of their MEPs is the only person who replied when I emailed every MEP in the country about that issue.
icemann on 23/5/2019 at 07:53
Last weekend we had the federal election here in Australia. Expectations were on the left leaning labor party winning, as all opinion polls over the past 2 years had them ahead. Then election day came, and the more right sided Liberal party won.
Labor had campaigned heavily on fighting climate change, improving payments to those on government payments (the unemployed), and improving penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers. The Liberals had no policies at all for the election other than to not trust labor, and that they'd be supporting coal power. The liberals won in a landslide. I was completely devastated. People are stupid, choosing short term economic gain over the long term effects of pollution and climate change. The major downside, is that for the next 10 years no'ones going to even go near announcing a climate change policy, and instead will be supporting coal power. Only stupid people are breeding I tell you.
Daxim on 23/5/2019 at 09:41
I – living abroad – went to the effort to register for postal vote. The .de ballot is so long it was folded five times.
I hope that the Pirate party candidate can cross the 0.5% implicit hurdle and continue the (
http://enwp.org/Julia_Reda) incumbent thorn's-in-the-side good work.
heywood on 23/5/2019 at 14:31
Quote Posted by icemann
Last weekend we had the federal election here in Australia. Expectations were on the left leaning labor party winning, as all opinion polls over the past 2 years had them ahead. Then election day came, and the more right sided Liberal party won.
Labor had campaigned heavily on fighting climate change, improving payments to those on government payments (the unemployed), and improving penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers. The Liberals had no policies at all for the election other than to not trust labor, and that they'd be supporting coal power. The liberals won in a landslide. I was completely devastated. People are stupid, choosing short term economic gain over the long term effects of pollution and climate change. The major downside, is that for the next 10 years no'ones going to even go near announcing a climate change policy, and instead will be supporting coal power. Only stupid people are breeding I tell you.
Climate change skepticism is as strong on the right in Australia as it is in the US, at least that was my impression when living there. And some people in the center probably still have hard feelings over Labor's carbon tax. One thing Labor seemed to have going for them is leadership stability.
Anyway, it seems like a left bias is starting to appear in a lot of polling results. The right seems under-represented, either by choice or because flawed polling methods.
Pyrian on 23/5/2019 at 15:54
The polls showed a close election. People shouldn't be surprised when polls with an expected error of ~5% are 2% off, but people only really remember the topline "who won who lost" portion. There
is something suspicious about a bunch of polls with ~5% error being within 1% of each other, though. Suggests they're calibrating on each other, which they really oughtn't do.
Quote:
Anyway, it seems like a left bias is starting to appear in a lot of polling results.
Yeah, about half of them. Funny how the right-wing always claims polling bias when the polls are off in one direction, then are conspicuously silent when they're off the other way, and then cite the time before next time the polls are off to the left...
heywood on 23/5/2019 at 19:01
It just seems that the surprises have been going to the right. I'm trying to think of a surprise victory the other way on the level of the Australian election, or Trump, or Brexit. The closest I can think of is in NZ, but in that case Labour leadership changed just a month or so before the election, and the polls tracked Jacinda Ardern's rapid rise to election day.