OTL Election maps resources thread

[Uhura's Mazda]

Here's a couple of OTL elections I haven't got round to posting for some reason. First off, a hipster one: St Lucia. St Lucia is another one of these Portuguese/Gibraltarian styles of country where both of the main parties have vaguely lefty names, but only one is actually on the left. In this case, it is the Saint Lucia Labour Party, which is on the centre-left, governed from 1951-1964 and occasionally after that, and is led by Kenny Anthony, who has been around forever, serving as PM from 1997 to 2006 and 2011 to 2016. As you will infer from that, he lost the election which was held last June. Mildly interesting fact: he has a doctorate from the University of Birmingham.

The other party is the United Workers Party, a Christian Democratic party led by Allen Chastanet who, despite being the head of government of an actual country, does not have a photo on his Wikipedia page. This tells you all you need to know about Saint Lucia.

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

This is New Zealand in 2014, and yes, I'm as surprised as you are that I haven't done this before.

I'm still too depressed to do a proper recap, so here's this: John Key won.

It's a bit big, so I've left it as a thumbnail. NOTE: NZ not actual size.

 

[Thande]

This is New Zealand in 2014, and yes, I'm as surprised as you are that I haven't done this before.

I'm still too depressed to do a proper recap, so here's this: John Key won.

It's a bit big, so I've left it as a thumbnail. NOTE: NZ not actual size.

View attachment 282305

Nice work. It's not too important, but a bit of Auckland appears to have been snipped off by the edge of the page.

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

Nice work. It's not too important, but a bit of Auckland appears to have been snipped off by the edge of the page.

Oh, bugger, you're right. It's not a particularly important bit of Auckland, though.

 

[Thande]

Missouri Gubernatorial Primary (Republican), 2016

Interesting. Will there be a runoff or is it single-round FPTP?

By the way, I made blank isolated versions of all the County-BAM states while I was doing those primary maps, though I'm not sure what would be the best way to post them.

 

[Thande]

Single round FPTP.

The multi-round system I proposed at the State convention failed (though I doubt it would have even applied this year to begin with).

OK, that's pretty cool you were actually able to raise it at least.

I assume AV (or IRV as it's usually called in the states) would be a non starter there?

 

[OwenM]

Is it Mississippi that has an actual, non-jungle, runoff system?

 

[Gog (♀)]

So here's some local politics and some map!

So here in North Miami, a Haitian majority city in Northern Miami-Dade county Florida, we have a good economy and a burgeoning middle class. However things are not all shiny. We have rampart corruption and poor public services. Remember this? That was here and shows our police...lets just say they aren't super competent. So a few years back our Mayor was arrested for corruption by the FBI and we had a special election. There was former Mayor Kevin Burns who is nice and all but didn't do a whole lot to clean up shop and is a bit of a perennial candidate these days. There is Dr. Smith Joseph who campaigned on being a reformer and an outsider. Finally former City Councilman Jean Rodrigue Marcellus who was endorsed by the former mayor in federal custody. Yeah. And all three are Democrats, this is a very Democratic place. The first round had these results.

Kevin Burns: 44.91%
Smith Joseph: 37.80%
Jean Rodrigue Marcellus: 17.28%

Burns got first place but there was a runoff. People really wanted an outsider who wouldn't be tied up in the machine so he won by a fairly comfortable margin.

Smith Joseph: 54.36%
Kevin Burns: 45.64%

 

[Utgard96]

I sense something of a west-east divide on that, I presume the Haitians are in the east and the burgeoning middle class is in the west?

 

[Gog (♀)]

I sense something of a west-east divide on that, I presume the Haitians are in the east and the burgeoning middle class is in the west?

Well most of the town is Haitians and middle class, but in the east is the parts that have the most Hispanics and whites, (why Burns has the most support there).

 

[Thande]

As we've been talking about US turnout a bit, I decided to redo those US turnout maps I did before in the more detailed 5-percentile heatmap colour scheme Alex and I have developed since then.

I did not realise New York's turnout was so relatively low...I know there was Storm Sandy in 2012, but it seems to be a running trend.

 

[Nanwe]

Turnout in the US is really abysmal. It's crazy that a presidential election seems so little voting, it has to affect the legitimacy of the American democracy, for sure. Either that or they've gotten used to such low turnouts.

 

[Utgard96]

Turnout in the US is really abysmal. It's crazy that a presidential election seems so little voting, it has to affect the legitimacy of the American democracy, for sure. Either that or they've gotten used to such low turnouts.

It's strange that the two oldest democracies in the Western world (excepting San Marino) are also the two with the consistently lowest turnouts.

 

[Nanwe]

It's strange that the two oldest democracies in the Western world (excepting San Marino) are also the two with the consistently lowest turnouts.

I wonder if the electoral system plays a role, after all, the amount of safe seats discourages voting. But then, that wouldn't explain Switzerland (one of the oldest and the most direct), with its equally awful turnouts but which uses PR.

 

[Utgard96]

I wonder if the electoral system plays a role, after all, the amount of safe seats discourages voting. But then, that wouldn't explain Switzerland (one of the oldest and the most direct), with its equally awful turnouts but which uses PR.

That was the other country I was referring to, if it wasn't clear. And yes, I'm kind of unsure what's up with them - I think the permanent coalition system (and the permanent FDP rule before that) could have something to do with it, as well as the general weakness of legislatures - that people don't care about voting because nothing will change anyway and the country will keep chugging along as it has for the past hundred years.

 

[Nanwe]

That was the other country I was referring to, if it wasn't clear. And yes, I'm kind of unsure what's up with them - I think the permanent coalition system (and the permanent FDP rule before that) could have something to do with it, as well as the general weakness of legislatures - that people don't care about voting because nothing will change anyway and the country will keep chugging along as it has for the past hundred years.

I thought you meant Britain, hence the mention of FPTP.

Yeah, I think so too. But then Austria has high-ish turnout despite permanent (and corrupt!) grand coalitions since 1945. I was wondering if in the Swiss model, like in the US it has do to do, as you say, with the fact that democracy seems more transactional, where party label and ideology matters less than constituents and equilibria and (corrupt) bargains. After all, the US party system is so weak that the Dems and GOP are more of public relations machines than organisations.

It'd be interesting to see if in Switzerland referendums have higher turnouts, if voters perceive them as more transformative than parliamentary elections, they might be more inclined to vote in them.

EDIT: So looking into it, in the 2015 election, turnout was 48.5%, but for the referendums in 2015 and 2016 turnout ranged from 43 to 64%, so it does seem that that may be a reasonable explanation.

 

[OwenM]

I thought you meant Britain, hence the mention of FPTP.

Yeah, I think so too. But then Austria has high-ish turnout despite permanent (and corrupt!) grand coalitions since 1945. I was wondering if in the Swiss model, like in the US it has do to do, as you say, with the fact that democracy seems more transactional, where party label and ideology matters less than constituents and equilibria and (corrupt) bargains. After all, the US party system is so weak that the Dems and GOP are more of public relations machines than organisations.

It'd be interesting to see if in Switzerland referendums have higher turnouts, if voters perceive them as more transformative than parliamentary elections, they might be more inclined to vote in them.

EDIT: So looking into it, in the 2015 election, turnout was 48.5%, but for the referendums in 2015 and 2016 turnout ranged from 43 to 64%, so it does seem that that may be a reasonable explanation.

I've also seen a suggestion of fatigue with the sheer number of votes.

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

Does anyone remember that election in Australia which happened just over a month ago?

Yeah.

They just declared the last result for the House of Representatives.

Note particularly the very light majority shades in South Australia - nearly all of that is down to the Nick Xenophon Team managing to take disaffected voters away from both parties, to the extent that one of his puppets took the Whyalla seat. She was a former staffer to the previous Liberal MP. Totes anti-establishment amirite.

Some asterisks concerning the National Party: I ummed and ahhed over whether to give them or the Greens the green spectrum on the map, and eventually decided to go with weight of numbers, which I know is the opposite decision to the way Thande did it IN TWENTY THIRTEEN but this is for the simple reason that Nick Xenophon is now using yellow, so you essentially have to use the teal spectrum for somebody. I went with weight of numbers in the end, so the Greens are teal. Of course.

The other National asterisk is the LNP in Queensland. These MPs belong to a merged Liberal-National party on a State level, but they choose to sit with either Liberal or National on a federal level. Thande established a precedent to show this on the map, so LNP MPs who choose to sit with the Nats would be the Nat colour, and I was going to do this as well, but some of the MPs still haven't made a public statement about which party room they will sit in, so sod 'em. They're all blue.

I'll do one for 1st-pref votes in the Alternate Electoral Maps thread when I get the chance.

 

[Thande]

Nice work, U's M.

Turnout in the US is really abysmal. It's crazy that a presidential election seems so little voting, it has to affect the legitimacy of the American democracy, for sure. Either that or they've gotten used to such low turnouts.

I should be clear that this is based on Voting Age Population turnout definition (as this was the only definition with data available for all those elections). In the US turnout is defined by both VAP and Voting Eligible Population (VEP) which is a more sensible method of turnout IMO but the figures aren't as widely available. VAP just compares how many people voted to the total number of people in the state aged 18 or over on election day - which ignores the fact that some of them are ineligible due to not being citizens, being felons (some states ban people from voting for life if they've ever committed a crime), etc.

Not that US turnouts aren't low even bearing this in mind, of course - it is interesting how presidential turnout has noticeably increased starting in 2004 though.

 

[OwenM]

Does anyone remember that election in Australia which happened just over a month ago?

Yeah.

They just declared the last result for the House of Representatives.

Note particularly the very light majority shades in South Australia - nearly all of that is down to the Nick Xenophon Team managing to take disaffected voters away from both parties, to the extent that one of his puppets took the Whyalla seat. She was a former staffer to the previous Liberal MP. Totes anti-establishment amirite.

Some asterisks concerning the National Party: I ummed and ahhed over whether to give them or the Greens the green spectrum on the map, and eventually decided to go with weight of numbers, which I know is the opposite decision to the way Thande did it IN TWENTY THIRTEEN but this is for the simple reason that Nick Xenophon is now using yellow, so you essentially have to use the teal spectrum for somebody. I went with weight of numbers in the end, so the Greens are teal. Of course.

The other National asterisk is the LNP in Queensland. These MPs belong to a merged Liberal-National party on a State level, but they choose to sit with either Liberal or National on a federal level. Thande established a precedent to show this on the map, so LNP MPs who choose to sit with the Nats would be the Nat colour, and I was going to do this as well, but some of the MPs still haven't made a public statement about which party room they will sit in, so sod 'em. They're all blue.

I'll do one for 1st-pref votes in the Alternate Electoral Maps thread when I get the chance.

Don't the LNP tend to sit with the Nats more, because they were the one state where the Nats were the dominant partner before the merger (same with the Country Liberals)?