Another
American Federation TL election map.
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With a population of approximately 727,000 people as of 2019, the Republic of Plata is the second-least populous nation in the AF, and only pulled ahead of Kootenai in 2002. However, its political system is one of the most unusual and notable in the entire Federation.
Originally known as Nevada, the area which is now Plata started out as an eastern part of the old Mexican state of Las Californias, and when the Californias achieved independence from Mexico, the scarcely-populated Sierra Nevada region was not admitted to the new nation, becoming the Principality of Nevada. However, in 1859, just nine years after Nevada achieved independence, silver was discovered in its deserts, and unsurprisingly, the Californias and other nearby states were eager to seize it for their own profit. The AF, however, sent in the International Guard to the Nevada border to force those governments to back down, and in 1863, Nevada was re-christened Plata in reference to both its Mexican past and its most valuable resource.
The importance of silver to the economy of Plata led to it becoming the first nation in the AF to adopt an entirely silver-based coinage in 1876, with then-Prime Minister William Stewart (a silver mine owner himself) declaring the move would make Plata 'the most prosperous nation in the Americas'. While this proved to be stretching it, it was certainly true that those who could bear the notoriously terrible heat and fairly poor working conditions in the mines of Plata did benefit a fair bit from the silver boom (although silver magnates, including those in other countries like the Californias, benefited more). Certainly, silver remained one of Plata's most lucrative exports for decades.
By the early 1950s, however, Plata's silver supply was starting to run low, which led to the 1954 election being the first which the until-then monolithic
Silver Liberal Party (SLP) had ever lost. For the next four decades, Plata had a three-party system, with the SLP's social democratic policies based on silver exports being challenged by the
Conservative Party of Plata (CPP), which advocated for reducing government spending and started to earn more money for the nation's treasury by allowing the sparsely-populated desert to be used for nuclear testing (not that this was something they told voters, of course) and the
Platan Liberalisation Party (PLP), which worked to develop more tourism for the growing city of Reno near the western border, as well as issuing heavily liberalizing reforms including relaxing divorce laws, legalizing prostitution and (most infamously) resisting the criminalization of LSD until the CPP-PLP coalition government led by Paul Laxalt finally managed to ban it in 1973. Both of these parties managed spells in government, the CPP being in power from 1954-62 and 1982-90 and the PLP from 1966-70, while the SLP retook power in 1962-66 and 1974-82 and the CPP and PLP formed a (very fractious) grand coalition from 1970-74.
The 1990 election, however, saw this system come crashing down, as the CPP government of Bob List had become resoundingly unpopular for its support of a nuclear waste repository and the unconstitutional creation of an unpopulated county in the middle of the desert to be used as its location, in addition to a recession in the state. The CPP was almost completely wiped out, and since 1990 it has not won so much as 10 seats in the Platan House of Representatives and never won representation in the Senate again. As a result, the SLP (which had adamantly opposed the nuclear waste dumping and, since the 1960s and 70s had come around to the tourist boom in Reno) took power, and the PLP renamed itself the
Libertarian Party, sort of fusing its social liberalism with the neoliberalism of the CPP to soak up its voters having avoided the fallout (pun unintended) from the scandals that had befallen its rival.
Since 1994, the SLP and Libertarians have alternated in power, the Libertarians taking power from 1998-2006, the SLP winning it back from 2006-2010 and then the Libertarians winning control again in the wake of the Great Recession in 2010. However, by 2018 the Libertarian government of Dean Heller had become highly unpopular; Heller faced aggressive criticism from SLP leader Catherine Cortez Mastro for being 'a total flip-flopper', with SLP campaigners distributing flip-flops with the Prime Minister's face on them as well as emphasizing speeches where he had supported a measure before adding a caption stating what he had actually voted to do to reinforce the image.
On top of this, minor parties were also starting to make an impact on Platan politics. The biggest of these by some margin was the
Pirate Party, a technocratic and big-tent party which advocated for direct democracy, easier voter access to propositions and (highly unusual for a mainstream political party, although given Plata's past currency record, perhaps less so) the proliferation of cryptocurrencies, including giving out leaflets simply explaining systems like Bitcoin and their potential benefits. They mostly seemed to benefit from the decline in support for the Libertarians, and did excellently, coming only three seats and 4.2% behind the Libertarians.
The other one to gain seats in the House of Representatives was the
Independent Platan Party (IPP), which ran to the right of the other four parties socially (unusual in the fairly libertarian Plata) and managed to hold a decent amount of appeal among older voters, ultimately winning 4 seats with 6.6% of the vote.
However, neither of these parties did much at all to stop the SLP winning back power, and it did so by a very comfortable majority in the popular vote and a fairly strong one in terms of House seats.
Something else to note is the nature of Plata's lower House, which like most Federation countries is where the Prime Minister sits and is the seat of most of the country's power. The 60 seats are elected by bloc vote and are not proportional like the Senate's seats, but give voters three votes to elect members of any party they wish, or one other option- the 'None Of These Candidates' vote. This is a system unique to Plata introduced for the 1974 election which allows voters to effectively choose not to vote for anyone, and if the option gets over 10% of the vote in a general election the election must be repeated the following year. However, this has rarely ever happened; the only occasion in which it did was in the 2002 election, although ironically the potential do-over for the SLP was squandered and the Libertarian government won re-election by a slightly bigger margin in 2003.
As of 2019, with the infighting in the Libertarians boiling over and the fledgling Pirates still trying to convince voters to support Bitcoin despite cryptocurrency being seen as confusing nonsense by most Platans, SLP supporters and the Cortez Mastro government appear to be fairly safe.
(Btw in case anyone's wondering, in TTL Reno has a similar reputation to Las Vegas while the latter is more like Phoenix or Denver, and many politicians who in OTL were born in Clark County are from Washoe County in TTL.)