Earlier this month, I posted about international elections — specifically India, South Africa, and the U.K.  At that time, I overlooked two elections, and one of those two elections has triggered another election which is taking place today.

So we start with the elections for the European Parliament.  It is easy to overlook the elections for the European Parliament.  There are no truly Europe-wide parties.  Instead, the national parties align themselves into blocks in the European Parliament with block membership being somewhat fluid.  More importantly, many of the major decisions are made by the Council of Ministers (i.e. the representatives of the national government) with a consensus required for action.  As a result, the election tends to produce a large protest vote against the individual national governments with the opposition parties doing well with voters not paying much attention to the issues that Parliament does have to decide.  More significantly, none of the blocks has anything close to a majority of seats. There were weird country-specific shuffles with unaffiliated members now being the second largest group in the European Parliament behind a block that is generally center-right.

However, the main impact of the election was in France.  Heading into the election the two of the largest parties in France were tied.  However, there was a big swing between the (minority) government center-left party and the ultra-nationalist party which ended up with over 35% of the French seats.  Which moves us to the new election. Continue Reading...