Like the Illinois map from yesterday, this is in the same TL as the American Federation from
this post.
The Republic of Ponca, like several other nations in the western AF, is a rural country with a fairly low population, but differs from those countries in several important aspects. The most notable of these, in political terms, is its
de jure nonpartisan legislature; Poncan political parties may endorse candidates for office and consult with Parliamentary Delegates (PDs) if they wish, but state law strictly forbids members of a 'political activist group' from running for office. In practical terms, of course, this often just means PDs formally resign their membership of a party before running for a seat in the House of Delegates.
The House itself, Ponca's unicameral legislature, consists of 90 seats across 30 constituencies with a population of roughly 60,000 people each, with three members elected by the Jefferson method. (In general, however, news reporting ranks the seats won by one party together, hence the way the results are organized here.) Ponca is notable for being the only unicameral nation in the AF, which gives the House significant power over legislative affairs and has led to a notable accountability system in which the Poncan Chief Executive is elected by a simple majority of PDs; any PD may be nominated once, usually the party leaders, and if 5 different candidates are rejected, another election must be called, which most recently occurred after the March 1989 election.
Going into 2017, the
Agrarian Party, with Ben Sasse as Chief Executive, had been in power since the 2009 election, when the centrist Kerrey government had been brought down by the impact of the Great Recession. However, Sasse was fairly unpopular with Poncan voters; left-wing ones were opposed to his increasing shift towards neoliberal economics while right-wing ones were incensed by his distaste for populism that had been the Agrarians' traditional asset. While a lack of commitment to welfare spending was hardly new for the Agrarians; practically every Agrarian Chief Executive since Edward Zorinsky had been fairly economically conservative; the party had been fairly limited in its adoption of far-right populist rhetoric, and this left things open for parties to the right of Sasse's Agrarians.
One of the two main parties to benefit, Pete Ricketts'
Constitutionalists, had been a regular fixture in the House of Delegates, generally securing a couple of seats in every election since 1985. However, the other party was only founded by 'conservative libertarian' Laura Ebike in 2016, namely the
Poncan National Party (PNP), a party which advocated for Ponca to demand a greater share of profit from the Keystone Pipeline in negotiations with Canada and Dakota, for a heavy immigration crackdown (a policy which endeared it to the Constitutionalists) and a new series of tariffs on highly urban (and liberal) countries like Sierra. To make matters worse for the Agrarians, the PNP and Constitutionalists arranged a non-competition pact in which they would not endorse candidates running against each other, but on the condition that they would uniformly vote for Ricketts and Ebike if one of them were nominated for Chief Executive.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the
Social Democratic Party, whose
de facto leader had been Patty Pansing Brooks since 2010, had been steadily casting off its 'third way' approach that it had held since Kerrey took over as its most senior figure in 1990, and its 2017 manifesto was its most ambitious in decades, promising an increase in the minimum wage from $10.50 to $14 an hour, the abolition of the death penalty and a 10% increase in the top rate of tax. This led to a surge in support for the Soc Dems, which proved to cause problems for Ernie Chambers'
Socialist Party, which had for almost two decades been an effective protest vote against the two biggest parties, but was having its vote squeezed by the left-wing populism of the Soc Dems and their appeal to working-class whites compromised by the appeal to xenophobia from the PNP and Constitutionalists. This was also a problem for the small number of
Unaligned politicians, as independents in Poncan politics are traditionally known to differentiate them from the way all PDs are
de jure known due to the hypothetically nonpartisan makeup of the chamber.
On election day, the 12th July, the Soc Dem surge managed to somewhat blunt the appeal of the PNP and Constitutionalists, who won more seats than the Soc Dems combined but fewer votes and came nowhere close to beating them alone. The big losers of the election proved to be the Socialists, whose vote was almost halved due to Soc Dems gaining at their expense; the Unaligned PDs, all but one of whom were unseated; and of course the Agrarians, who despite winning a small majority in 2013 of 48 seats and 47.7% of the vote lost over a quarter of that in 2017. Sasse immediately announced he would not run again as Chief Executive, although pundits noted he looked dismayed at his count in Norfolk, and the fragmented nature of the results made for considerable interest in who would succeed him.
Pansing Brooks immediately put herself forward to replace Sasse, but when a vote was held, she lost by 53 votes to 37, as only the whole Soc Dem and Socialist caucuses, the Unaligned PD and eight Agrarians supported her. As the
de facto leader of the third-largest party, Ebike was the next to run, losing by 65 votes to 25, as all members outside the PNP and Constitutionalists opposed her. Fears began to stoke about the possibility of another election, so when Ricketts stood, many Agrarian PDs chose to support him in the hopes of shifting the blame from their party; he was elected by 49 votes to 41, the first Poncan Chief Executive since Dwight Burney left office in 1961 to be allied with neither the Soc Dems nor the Agrarians.
As one might expect, there was considerable uproar, especially from left-leaning Poncans, that PDs had elected as Chief Executive a man whose party had taken less than 11% of the vote as Chief Executive, and since he took power Ricketts has faced what some analysts have nicknamed the 'trolling Delegation', as delegates from the left-wing parties routinely vote against him on principle and Agrarians frequently vote against him to humiliate him. This has led to him calling seven votes of confidence, the most of any Chief Executive in history; ironically, the involvement of the Agrarians in trying to humiliate Ricketts has not been well-received by voters either, with a poll from March 2019 finding 55% of Poncans felt that the Agrarians are 'obstructing' Ricketts compared to just 31% who felt they were 'just holding him to account'.
The main beneficiary of this seems to have been the Soc Dems, who are currently leading the polls for the next election in 2021, but it seems unlikely they will be able to win a majority despite this. It remains to be seen whether their lead will grow in the wake of continuing stagnation with the feud over Ricketts' policy agenda, or if the PNP will begin to benefit more from the Constitutionalists and Agrarians fighting. It is certainly true that Ebike has a higher approval rating than any other major Poncan politician, including Pansing Brooks, and the party has been rising in recent months, but whether this will last is unclear.
