New England has a lot of intricacies in its political geography that are hidden by the strong Democratic performance in much of the region. Demographic groups that trended Republican in other parts of the country didn't really do so here. With Irish Catholics in MA, that's mainly due to the legacy of Camelot.
Alternate Electoral Maps III
- Thread starter killertahu22
- Start date
What's going on with the two Solidarity districts on the south side of Boston Harbor? They really stand out from the rest of Greater Boston.
Pennsylvania's history in recent decades had been dominated by the Labor party in general and the Casey family in particular, with Bob Casey Sr being premier from 1984 to 1996, and Bob Casey Jr from 2001 to 2016. The long history of the Labor party was ensconced in the lore of the state's politics, and Pennsylvania's labor unions were capable actors in the political arena. Under Pennsylvania's open-list proportional representation system, organization was particularly useful, and they usually outorganized their opponents. Labor also was particularly effective in firming up the safety net (Casey Sr himself said there was no shame in being on welfare), and they were popularly identified with 'Caseycare'. Caseycare, formally known as the Pennsylvania Health Act, was the healthcare reform passed by Bob Casey Sr in 1987. Among other things, it established co-pay systems to help poor people better afford healthcare, gave people below the poverty line healthcare free at point of use, and established a state-owned corporation that directly provided insurance to all willing people who were below the median household income in the state. However, Conservatives charged that his welfare policies encouraged laziness and harmed work, and they were aghast at his minimum wage increases especially. A sickly Casey Sr was eventually forced to retire in 1996 due to bad health, and his uncharismatic successor, Tom Caltagirone, lost office to a Liberal-Conservative coalition five months later, in the July 8, 1996 general election. The new government cast itself as a deliverer of reform, turning a page on the Casey legacy and reducing the room the state took over.
Under Liberal Barbara Hafer, the first female Premier in the state's history, they set out to cut out what was unnecessary from Bob Casey Sr's long list of enacted policy. Despite some initial euphoria stemming from the fact that for the first time ever a woman had become premier and that the new government presented the prospect of change from years of Labor government, reality slowly set in that the beloved portions of the Casey legacy were being dismantled slowly, piece by piece. The Liberal party itself was being somewhat internally divided and riven by interal conflict, and bad blood set in between the Liberals and Conservatives. It became clear, by 1999, that the only thing keeping the government together was the fact that Labor would easily win any election called prematurely. Fear of Labor kept the government together. Unfortunately for the government, this only made things worse in some respects, and the parties were trading their reputations in for more time in government. The election was held off until the last possible minute. By then, a lot of reform had happened, but said reforms were far from completely welcomed by the population. Moreover, Labor's victory in the next election was a certainty. Bob Casey Sr dying in 2000 only cemented Labor's position, as it reminded voters of his transformative changes to the state. His son giving the eulogy at his funeral was later said by Hafer, in her memoirs titled The Trailblazer Reformer, to have marked for sure the end of her government, as it vaulted him into the rank of premier-in-waiting. Hitherto largely unknown, he gave a hearty and impassioned speech praising his father, at once setting highly positive views of him in the broader electorate.
The 2001 general election, which took place on October 21, was a landslide win for Labor. Labor won an absolute majority of 141 of 250 seats, which was 56% of the chamber, and won 51% of the total vote. Half the cabinet went down in defeat and found themselves ejected from parliament - some of them due to ranked choice voting in the single member districts. The Liberals were especially harmed, losing about half of their seats. The pendulum swung back again, and Bob Casey Jr, then only 41, began his prolific career as premier of the state. His youth was matched only by his popularity, and he too got euphoria. 'Caseymania' continued for many years, as state Labor rode the economic boom and invested hitherto unimaginable sums in helping rural Pennsylvania. In 2005, the Labor government was returned for another term, with a slim majority of 129 of 250 seats. Bob Casey Jr was a highly effective leader, and he reversed about four-fifths of the reforms enacted by the Hafer government. He called a new election in 2008, seeking to get ahead of economic uncertainty, this time slipping to a mere minority. He was forced into a minority government dependent on Green and Liberal support. This was not to last. Mild austerity measures pushed by the government were unpopular with the Greens, and the Liberals disliked his favoritism to rural Pennsylvania in his approach to the economy. The government lost a confidence vote in October 21, 2010, forcing a new election.
Contrary to popular wisdom, Casey actually gained seats. Burning bridges with the Liberals in the campaign, Casey claimed that if Liberal leader Allyson Schwartz became Premier, then the Hafer government would be revived. It was a very harsh and nasty campaign both from the government and the opposition. Schwartz was made into a punching bag by the Labor campaign. When serving as Minister of Healthcare, she tweaked regulations to make abortions free for everyone, in what was a hugely controversial move (previously, Casey had banned elective abortion in the state, in what had been an equally controversial move). She also made disdainful remarks about those who were unemployed, which Labor willfully placed out of context. In any case, the baggage of the Hafer government was fatal to the opposition in 2010, as both Schwartz and Conservative leader Rick Santorum had served as ministers in the Hafer government, and Casey severely humbled the Liberals. It was the worst election for the Liberal party since 2001. Schwartz resigned as leader on election night, and Labor came within a few seats of a majority. The Greens promptly agreed to back Labor on all confidence and supply measures, in a deliberate and very public snubbing of the Liberals. Casey would go on to please them over the coruse of the next parliament with large amounts of stimulus, and he had a good working relationship with Elizabeth Fiedler, the newly elected Green Party leader, despite their differences on things like abortion. Casey's government raised the statewide minimum wage yet again, to $12 an hour, and passed a law protecting individual say in data usage in late 2014. He also continued to spend money on rural broadband, which was a stable of his government's program ever since he was elected.
Casey's final election was in 2015, when he stood for a record fifth term. Still licking their wounds from 2010, the opposition staged a comeback, but still lacked more seats than Labor and the Greens put together. The campaign was largely sedate and was relatively positive. The Conservatives called the Labor party 'tired and outdated', and the Liberals campaigned on abortion. But the outcome was never in doubt. On March 18, 2015, Casey was returned to power, losing around half a dozen seats, while the Greens had their best election yet, stopping the Liberals from having the balance of power. The issue of shale drilling was a major matter though. Labor supported it because of rural jobs it would provide and the fact it would lower utility bills, while the Greens were very much opposed. But the Greens weren't entirely environmentally focused - they were the most left-wing party in the state, and Labor still ticked more boxes for them, as Labor's old-school but still clearly fairly-left-leaning policy got many of the Greens' goals accomplished. Also, Labor had introduced a carbon tax, to raise money. The proceeds were given to poor people regardless of race or residency. Labor skillfully kept the Greens onside as means of avoiding a need to cater to the Liberals or the Conservatives. Labor remained powerful and dominant, and this was little altered by Casey finally retiring in 2016, passing the torch to his confidante, Chris Sainato. As protege of the highly respected Casey, Sainato had all the skills needed to keep things working. Though the Greens did not once hold a Cabinet position, they had renewed their confidence-and-supply agreement twice, and had been consulted in policy.
Meanwhile, the Liberals had undertook a left turn and gone from centrist to center-left, in hopes of escaping attacks relating to the Hafer government. They also elected a fresh new leader in 2018 - Brendan Boyle. Boyle rejected the Hafer government and said that times have changed. The Liberals did very well in polling, subsequently, helped in part by their socially liberal platform, which called for legalizing elective abortions once again, and making it free for everyone. The Conservatives also elected a new leader - Scott Wagner. Wagner was an outsider, completely unrelated to the Hafer government, and at first he too won popular acclaim, but his hard-nosed approach took a toll on his image, and he grew steadily disliked among the population. When election time finally was reached, and the writs were dropped, Labor felt cautiously optimistic, hoping for another term in government. The Conservatives made real gains during the campaign as scandals accumulated during Labor's long tenure in office continued to hit the headlines, but Wagner grew highly unpopular and was unable to profit as much as he would have liked. This vaulted the Liberals, as Labor's image was hit by scandals and the Conservatives by their weak leader. The Liberals' being more left-leaning was a mixed bag. On one hand it kept them from getting more votes from the Conservatives, which helped the Conservatives ultimately. On the other, they were a safe option for usually Labor voters unhappy with the corruption. Labor as such was not in a good position, and this was reflected in both public polling and internals. It suddenly seemed as though many years of Labor government were set to end.
As a result of all these ills, Labor was briefly in third, but staged a strong comeback later on in the campaign, as a barrage of ads hit the state's airwaves. Labor's well-oiled operation reminded voters of what Labor had done in government, and said they were the only party that could be really trusted with protecting the Casey legacy. Bob Casey Jr, still personally popular, made campaign appearances and showed up at rallies with Labor faithful. By March 10, Labor was again in pole position, Nothing shifted much in the last few days, as Labor regained lost turf, but Boyle's status as a gifted campaigner aided him immensely. The Conservatives meanwhile ran a very negative campaign aimed squarely at Labor. Wagner blasted Labor for corruption, for pork-barreling (Lawrence County had gained unusual amounts of government investment since Sainato became Premier), and for having composed of allegedly "old, tired, and unimaginative men". Sainato was 60, ironically, he was younger than Wagner, who was 64. But that didn't stop Wagner, who highlighted young candidates and accused Labor of not caring for hard work. Wagner, owner of a waste disposal company, sought to cast Labor's leader as never having had a "real job" (Sainato had spent his whole career in elected office and as a career politician), while Wagner had worked hard to operate his trash company. He himself took part in taking the trash, as means of exercise, and he tried to look like a strong and vigorous leader. But his style rubbed many off the wrong way, and the Conservatives sagged in polls. The best that could be said though was that they were easily holding on their core vote.
On election day, Labor again won a plurality, just as they had done in a long string of elections prior. But the Liberals finished with enough seats to form a government with the Conservatives. That is, if the Conservatives were interested. Under Wagner, purity mattered more than it used to, and things were more difficult with the Liberals than they were formerly. The Liberals were still willing to form a coalition in theory though. On this understanding, the Libs and Cons worked to defeat any prospect for Labor to get a chance. Sainato, seeing the way things were blowing, conceded. Now, in the open, the differences between the two were in full display. Boyle campaigned as a socially permissive left-liberal, while Wagner campaigned as a conservative reformer in center-right outsider cloth. Reconciling these two things was difficult, and Boyle was wary of tanking his PR by agreeing to from a center-right-policy-enacting coalition. Wagner, meanwhile, had a better hand, twice as much seats, and had come between a mere twenty seats of Labor. After 2 weeks, talks broke down, and it was ultimately accepted that the Conservatives and Liberals would be unable to form a government together in coalition like they had done in 1996. This left only one other non-Labor government option - Liberal government with Conservative outside support. But Boyle personally refused this, thinking it would be unstable and that he'd be in too much debt to the Conservatives. As such this option was quickly dismissed. Boyle, with great reluctance, turned to Labor, and coalition talks commenced. It became clear just how little political capital the Liberals had, so Labor had a considerable amount of bargaining power. Labor did agree to free birth control for those under the poverty line, but it wouldn't budge on abortion. The Liberals had no means of forcing them to - in a new election, the Liberals would quite likely lack the balance of power on the floor, and as such this had to be avoided. The Liberals did secure an end to rent control in the ultimate coalition agreement, and they won a fair amount of concessions, but the overall feel of the agreement was much more Labor than Liberal. Sainato would finally finalize a coalition agreement on May 11, and two days later a government was swore in, with 18 Labor and 7 Liberal ministers.
Party ideologies and bases:
Labor: old-school Pennsylvania Democrats and minorities. Also gets a fair amount of votes from elsewhere due to its status as a party of power with deft leaders. Center-left to left-wing.
Liberal: Socially progressive white people in Southeast Pennsylvania and Allegheny County. Also college towns. Center to center-left.
Conservative: center-right rural folk, very economically conservative types in cities, and the vast majority of working class people who don't favor or like Labor, as well as exurban people in metro Pittsburgh. Center-right to right-wing.
Greens: they are "watermelons", green on the outside red on the inside. Their vote is very concentrated in the cities. They are almost as socially progressive as the Liberals, but have many very left-wing sorts. Left-wing to far-left.
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From Forgotten No More:
The United States Presidential Election of 1916
Robert L. Owen (Workers - Virginia)/Joseph Sugarsville (Workers - Nova Scotia) - 428 EV; 40.66% PV
William J. Goebel (Constitution - Kentucky)/Lincoln Dixon (Constitution-Indiana) - 48 EV; 26.09% PV
Joseph Smith III (Truth & Light - Ute)/Myles Turner Jr. (Truth & Light - Palouse) - 5 EV
Philander C. Knox (Federalist - Pennsylvania)/Robert L. Border (Federalist - New Jersey) - 3 EV
The United States Presidential Election of 1916
Robert L. Owen (Workers - Virginia)/Joseph Sugarsville (Workers - Nova Scotia) - 428 EV; 40.66% PV
William J. Goebel (Constitution - Kentucky)/Lincoln Dixon (Constitution-Indiana) - 48 EV; 26.09% PV
Joseph Smith III (Truth & Light - Ute)/Myles Turner Jr. (Truth & Light - Palouse) - 5 EV
Philander C. Knox (Federalist - Pennsylvania)/Robert L. Border (Federalist - New Jersey) - 3 EV
Post from the MOTF, since it is an electoral map. If you take the time to read it through, please consider taking my strawpoll so I can see how well I executed the concept!
Pretentious Japanese who want to talk about their worldliness like to say one cannot truly understand the concept of cosmic dualism without living in Pacifica.
In many ways, the country appears a paradise on earth: a warm, sunny climate, stunning natural beauty, rich agricultural land, bountiful mineral resources, and a life far, far away from the steadily-deteriorating Manchu-Siamese nuclear standoff. But foreigners who start looking into visa applications and the implausibly-cheap real estate soon come to a rude awakening. The price its inhabitants pay for all this is devastating and frequent natural disasters. Pacifica rarely goes three years or so without losing a city and tens of thousands of its citizens to earthquakes, typhoons, kaijus, wildfires, or mudslides. Emigration, both to safer areas and safer countries, is endemic. And as the planet heats up, the fault continues to shift, and commercial fishing removes more natural prey from the Pacific, these dangers are only becoming more frequent and more destructive as time goes on.
This fact of life has functionally erased the politics of the past. The two major parties are primarily defined by their stance on disaster preparedness and response. Broadly speaking, the National Safety Party (technically National-Safety, but there are few old enough to remember voting for the National or Safety parties) calls for stronger regulations and vast government spending on construction subsidies, while the Public Interest Party argues to focus on increasing growth in safe times and making it easier to rebuild. From this all else follows: NSP is the party of the exposed homeowner or businessman, the educated, and of those most vulnerable to disaster, especially along the coast; PIP is the party of the tenant, those with less to lose in general, and of those inland tired of higher taxes to support those who choose to live on the more dangerous coast.
This makes them nearly undefinable by broad-stroke ideological descriptions used elsewhere; in casual conversation, the NSP and its allies are considered the 'rear' to the PIP's 'front'. There are various claimed origin stories for this terminology; one 'just-so' and almost certainly apocryphal version has it that the two sides were arguing over a timeline for disaster response SOP - the PIP side wanting to use resources 'up front' before disaster hit, the NSP wanting to save them for 'further back' in the timeline. Another more popular, but probably also apocryphal story says in one of the many Sacramento state houses built before the de facto capital moved up to Pacifica City (formerly Carson City), the old Safety party chose to sit by the emergency exits in the back. The most likely actual answer is that when the official language of debate changed from Japanese to English immediately before independence, Japanese-speaking delegates, who were overrepresented in the NSP's various predecessor parties, sat towards the back to have closer access to interpreters - but this version is boringly practical and brings up memories of the bad old days of racial politics, so it's rarely raised.
Side note: A fun side effect of this convention is that applying it anachronistically to the early free elections of the '70s makes council diagrams look like the future independent Pacifican flag (assuming you use yellow instead of green for the Reform and Autonomy party). Actual historians and pro-Japan nostalgics HATE this, so you can believe nationalistically-inclined graphic designers like to sneak it into as many textbooks and cyberarchives as they can get away with. National Councilors don't actually sit like this (they sit in their sectoral groupings), but evidently the Election Administration Commission has used the rear-front convention for its official records anyhow, probably for that exact reason.
2034 was an unusually quiet year; wildfires smoked a few thousand homes in the north, a quake levelled part of the southern Valley, and an adolescent kaiju ate a suburb of Los Angeles, but beyond that the country was largely safe and prosperous. As such, the NSP, overextended from a massive wave election following the disastrous 2029 breach in the Carquinez Dam, was predictably creamed - though it turned out worse than it had a right to be by the actual vote changes. One of the many consequences of disaster democracy is those who stay in devastated areas have their vote powers expanded dramatically, and in this case, the depopulated Valley gave the PIP a seat result strongly disproportionate to their voting power.
But there will be no rest for the Pacificans, for cosmic dualism comes for all. Even now, the faults continue to shift, the Valley continues to dry, sea levels continue to rise, and whalers and fishers continue to stir up kaiju nests.
Such is life in Pacifica. Enjoy the white, sparkling beaches - while they're there!
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I had initially planned to do a 'cyberpunk Godzilla disaster Japan' evacuation route map for this after having melted my brain looking at HOI4:TNO's interface, but then had the idea to put it together with a party system concept I've been thinking on for a long time, based on the idea of 'blue-orange morality,' i.e. a society which faces problems so conceptually different from ours as to be unrecognizable. I haven't yet been creative enough to think up that particular white whale idea, but this is something similar but slightly more modest: a political system very similar to ours, but with priorities so different that parties' coalitions and ideologies are near-unrecognizable. Previous ideas along the same line: a democracy in a neo-feudalist society and a democracy in a polythiestic world, with parties advocating for placating different sets of gods. Feel free to steal those if you're inspired, they are faaar back on my back burner.
I'd be very interested to see how well I did, so if you're so inclined, please consider taking this strawpoll!
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I finally got to make another Chinese provincial election, this time for Qinghai.
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One of the most racially diverse Han-majority provinces in China, Qinghai Province also saw the longest unbroken warlord dynasty in the Republic of China’s history, with the Muslim Ma family governing it from when Ma Qi took control of the province in October 1915, all the way up to Ma Jiyuan’s democratic relinquishing of power after the first multiethnic provincial elections were held in October 1991.
Between this time, however, by far the most significant figure in Qinghai’s politics was Ma Bufang, who first took power in 1938 and ruled until his death in 1975. Under Ma’s rule, Qinghai adopted socialist-inspired modernizations of Qinghai’s infrastructure, education system and religious sects, opposing fundamentalist and non-Yihewani Muslim groups and eliminating slavery and lordship for Mongols and Tibetans but allowing religious pluralism.
Ma Jiyuan kept these reforms in place when he ascended to the governorship, but in keeping with the reformism advised by President Moshan, he expanded pluralism to Islam. At first this made him greatly popular, but in the 1980s he pursued neoliberal reforms to Qinghai’s infrastructure, something which made the Kuomintang intensely unpopular both due to general opposition to the move and because it caused the province’s economy to weaken significantly as the 1980s wore on.
Like Shanxi, despite a lack of proximity to the Tiananmen Square Revolution, social pressures made Qinghai’s population greatly supportive of its aims. Unlike the mostly homogenously Han Chinese Shanxi, though, Qinghai’s voters have generally been resoundingly unified behind the Progressives in national elections due to their pluralist and pro-diversity attitudes and sympathy to interventionist economics. In every presidential election since 1990, at least 63% of the vote in Qinghai has gone to the Progressive nominee, and in every National Congress election, the Progressives have won every district in Qinghai by strong margins, making it by far their strongest province. In 2010, it made history by giving Bo Xilai over 76% of the vote, the highest for either party in any presidential election.
Unsurprisingly, on the provincial level it has a dominant party system, something ironically enough largely ascribed to the proportional electoral system used for provincial elections. Ma first implemented this system, so he said, ‘to ensure a diverse, fair range of representation for the many peoples of Qinghai’, but the form taken- a single constituency for the whole province elected by PR list- was widely seen by left-leaning Qinghai citizens as a pathetic attempt to justify trying to fragment Qinghai’s voters against the Progressives by encouraging voters to support ethnic parties instead of them, especially given the Kuomintang’s contemporary distaste for PR in provinces where it was clearly stronger. Suffice it to say that the Progressives did not have trouble convincing voters to tactically support them, and actually managed to win a small overall majority.
After the Progressives took power, they replaced the old system with proportional blocs based on the six prefectures and two cities, with the fewest members assigned being the two granted to Golog Prefecture, and the rate of assignment of additional seats being based on multiples of Golog Prefecture’s population; for the most recent quadrennial election in November 2019, this meant approximately one member per 90,000 people, with the most populous area of the province (Xining) being assigned 24 members.
As widely expected, the Progressive government of Dukbum Tsering easily won re-election, beating the Kuomintang by over 25 points, winning more than twice as many seats as that party did, taking a majority in every prefecture except the majority-Han Haixi (which is a swing prefecture on the national level, but a pro-Kuomintang one in provincial elections) and coming just one seat short of an overall majority. Given the party has occasionally won majority governments in Qinghai, this was not their strongest ever result, but was their best since 2007 and left them easily able to enact their agenda. Some have even speculated that Tsering might use his mandate to push for explicit discrimination protections for LGBT+ people in Qinghai and more explicit womens’ rights protections, something the Kuomintang. Loyalists and Islamic socialist but socially conservative Muslim Party (a Qinghai-only party) have fought tooth and nail to prevent but which newly-elected Communists and Green members are likely to give the Progressives a majority in favour of.
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One of the most racially diverse Han-majority provinces in China, Qinghai Province also saw the longest unbroken warlord dynasty in the Republic of China’s history, with the Muslim Ma family governing it from when Ma Qi took control of the province in October 1915, all the way up to Ma Jiyuan’s democratic relinquishing of power after the first multiethnic provincial elections were held in October 1991.
Between this time, however, by far the most significant figure in Qinghai’s politics was Ma Bufang, who first took power in 1938 and ruled until his death in 1975. Under Ma’s rule, Qinghai adopted socialist-inspired modernizations of Qinghai’s infrastructure, education system and religious sects, opposing fundamentalist and non-Yihewani Muslim groups and eliminating slavery and lordship for Mongols and Tibetans but allowing religious pluralism.
Ma Jiyuan kept these reforms in place when he ascended to the governorship, but in keeping with the reformism advised by President Moshan, he expanded pluralism to Islam. At first this made him greatly popular, but in the 1980s he pursued neoliberal reforms to Qinghai’s infrastructure, something which made the Kuomintang intensely unpopular both due to general opposition to the move and because it caused the province’s economy to weaken significantly as the 1980s wore on.
Like Shanxi, despite a lack of proximity to the Tiananmen Square Revolution, social pressures made Qinghai’s population greatly supportive of its aims. Unlike the mostly homogenously Han Chinese Shanxi, though, Qinghai’s voters have generally been resoundingly unified behind the Progressives in national elections due to their pluralist and pro-diversity attitudes and sympathy to interventionist economics. In every presidential election since 1990, at least 63% of the vote in Qinghai has gone to the Progressive nominee, and in every National Congress election, the Progressives have won every district in Qinghai by strong margins, making it by far their strongest province. In 2010, it made history by giving Bo Xilai over 76% of the vote, the highest for either party in any presidential election.
Unsurprisingly, on the provincial level it has a dominant party system, something ironically enough largely ascribed to the proportional electoral system used for provincial elections. Ma first implemented this system, so he said, ‘to ensure a diverse, fair range of representation for the many peoples of Qinghai’, but the form taken- a single constituency for the whole province elected by PR list- was widely seen by left-leaning Qinghai citizens as a pathetic attempt to justify trying to fragment Qinghai’s voters against the Progressives by encouraging voters to support ethnic parties instead of them, especially given the Kuomintang’s contemporary distaste for PR in provinces where it was clearly stronger. Suffice it to say that the Progressives did not have trouble convincing voters to tactically support them, and actually managed to win a small overall majority.
After the Progressives took power, they replaced the old system with proportional blocs based on the six prefectures and two cities, with the fewest members assigned being the two granted to Golog Prefecture, and the rate of assignment of additional seats being based on multiples of Golog Prefecture’s population; for the most recent quadrennial election in November 2019, this meant approximately one member per 90,000 people, with the most populous area of the province (Xining) being assigned 24 members.
As widely expected, the Progressive government of Dukbum Tsering easily won re-election, beating the Kuomintang by over 25 points, winning more than twice as many seats as that party did, taking a majority in every prefecture except the majority-Han Haixi (which is a swing prefecture on the national level, but a pro-Kuomintang one in provincial elections) and coming just one seat short of an overall majority. Given the party has occasionally won majority governments in Qinghai, this was not their strongest ever result, but was their best since 2007 and left them easily able to enact their agenda. Some have even speculated that Tsering might use his mandate to push for explicit discrimination protections for LGBT+ people in Qinghai and more explicit womens’ rights protections, something the Kuomintang. Loyalists and Islamic socialist but socially conservative Muslim Party (a Qinghai-only party) have fought tooth and nail to prevent but which newly-elected Communists and Green members are likely to give the Progressives a majority in favour of.
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This is probably a longshot, but does anyone have a blank national precinct map I could edit in MS Paint? I had this interesting idea of swinging individual precincts to see what 2016 would have looked like with county margins from past elections but I can't find an editable precinct map I can use. can anyone help?
Is there a TL for this?
I like that the Lib-Dems are kingmakers in both the elections. Do they support Labor in one government and the Conservatives in another?
No TL just felt like doing this for some reason. I'm gonna say the Lib-Dems go with the Conservatives in 1990 and Labor in 2020.
This is a little sequel/continuation of the Irish Parliament post I did a while back.
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Federalism in the UK really got its start, of course, with the initiation of Irish Home Rule under the juristiction of the Parliament of Ireland in 1886. Since then, subsequent governments have produced further reforms for other parts of the country as pressure for devolution of power has grown. The first such measures to be applied to the mainland, ironically, do not exist anymore- the London County Council and Parliament of Middlesex, created in 1889 in part due to scandals over corruption in the Metropolitan Board of Works and the lack of representation of the populous county of Middlesex despite its close proximity to London. These were replaced in 1965 by the Parliament of London, which included most of the areas by now considered part of the greater London area.
As one might imagine, the granting of home rule for Ireland led to pressure for similar measures in the UK's other two Celtic nations, Scotland and Wales; the establishment of parliaments for these countries was one of the (albeit downplayed) policy planks of the 1906 Liberal manifesto that made Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman the first Liberal PM in 15 years. The Parliament of Wales has had a greatly unusual electoral system in that its Liberal party has been independent from the national party since Rhys Hopkin Morris took over its leadership after it lost power in 1931, never formed an alliance with the SDP and effectively forms the bulwark of the country's right on the devolved level against Labour (which has dominated power in the country for most of the time since 1931) while the Tories are a marginal force and the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru often serves as a kingmaker of the country's devolved elections.
The Parliament of Scotland is, in some ways, stranger. In its early years, it was a straightforward Tory-versus-Liberals and then Tory-versus-Labour battleground, but after the Tory government of Jack Browne fell in 1960, the Tories spent 50 years steadily falling away as a party of power in Scotland due to the unpopularity of Thatcherism (especially given her efforts to defund, snatch power from or even abolish regional governments that tried to defy her monetarist policies); instead, the main conflict was between Labour and the nascent Scottish National Party (SNP), with the latter controlling the Parliament continuously since 2004 as Scots grew distasteful of Labour's centrist turn in recent decades. At the same time, under the moderate leadership of Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tories have risen to form the main opposition once more, though the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems have all expressed disgust at the concept of putting them into power anytime soon.
Regional governance within England did not flare up again as an issue until after the Attlee government took office in 1945, and ironically started with the Tories advocating for such assemblies to avoid monopolizing state power. Establishing such assemblies was a Tory policy plank in 1950, and once they came to power in 1951 Churchill's government created the Parliament of Anglia (covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk and Suffolk), the Parliament of the Home Counties (incorporating Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire and Sussex) and the Parliament of Wessex (containing Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and despite the objections of its residents, Cornwall).
It was not lost on Labour voters that the Tories had basically given the south the power to ignore a future Labour government's policies, but one of the few well-respected policy accomplishments of the Eden government was to create assemblies for the rest of England- the Parliament of the West Midlands (Cheshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire), the Parliament of the East Midlands (Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland), the Parliament of Lancashire, the Parliament of Yorkshire (both of which cover the same area as the historic counties) and the Parliament of Northumbria (County Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland).
Since then, most of these have been fairly competitive in their quadrennial elections (held every four years from 1956 onwards, though the 2020 elections have been postponed to 2021) and power has changed hands several times- as of 2020, Labour have control of Lancashire, Northumbria and Yorkshire while the Tories control both Midlands Parliaments. On top of that, aside from the Tories' sweep of all five Parliaments in 1968 and Labour's sweep of all five in 1996, no election has seen one party control all Midlands and northern Parliaments.
In this regard, the southern Parliaments were long considered more problematic, as the Tories ruled all of them from their first elections in 1953 until the Liberal-SDP Alliance took power in all three during their surge in 1981. All of these governments implemented proportional systems to replace the FPTP elections that had previously been held in the regions, and ironically, all three were turfed out by the Tories in the 1985 elections. Despite this, the Wessex Parliament used its power in an unconventional move that irked the Thatcher government immensely- it permitted Cornwall to found the Parliament of Cornwall in 1982 and split off from Wessex. Despite the de facto existence of the Cornish Parliament, the Government did not acknowledge its existence as a separate entity until Blair's government came in in 1997 the Tories refused to acknowledge it until David Cameron changed the party's policy in 2008.
While, in a majoritarian sense, the Tories are still dominant in the southern Parliaments- aside from the 1993 election in Anglia, they have been the biggest party in all the elections held there since PR was introduced- they do not have such a stranglehold on the politics of these assemblies as they previously did. Besides the 2009 election, they have consistently been forced to either form minority governments or cooperate with Lib Dem, Independent and UKIP MPs to retain power, and have been out of power on a few occasions since in each Parliament (1993-2001 in Anglia, where a Labour-Lib Dem coalition took control; 1997-2001 in Wessex, with the Lib Dems leading a coalition with independents; and 1993-1997 in the Home Counties, where Labour led a coalition with the Lib Dems). Cornwall, however, is a different story; the Thatcher and Major governments' attempts to encroach on its powers made the Tories greatly unpopular there until they finally took power in 2010, though that government has been re-elected twice in 2014 and 2018.
*
Federalism in the UK really got its start, of course, with the initiation of Irish Home Rule under the juristiction of the Parliament of Ireland in 1886. Since then, subsequent governments have produced further reforms for other parts of the country as pressure for devolution of power has grown. The first such measures to be applied to the mainland, ironically, do not exist anymore- the London County Council and Parliament of Middlesex, created in 1889 in part due to scandals over corruption in the Metropolitan Board of Works and the lack of representation of the populous county of Middlesex despite its close proximity to London. These were replaced in 1965 by the Parliament of London, which included most of the areas by now considered part of the greater London area.
As one might imagine, the granting of home rule for Ireland led to pressure for similar measures in the UK's other two Celtic nations, Scotland and Wales; the establishment of parliaments for these countries was one of the (albeit downplayed) policy planks of the 1906 Liberal manifesto that made Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman the first Liberal PM in 15 years. The Parliament of Wales has had a greatly unusual electoral system in that its Liberal party has been independent from the national party since Rhys Hopkin Morris took over its leadership after it lost power in 1931, never formed an alliance with the SDP and effectively forms the bulwark of the country's right on the devolved level against Labour (which has dominated power in the country for most of the time since 1931) while the Tories are a marginal force and the Welsh nationalist Plaid Cymru often serves as a kingmaker of the country's devolved elections.
The Parliament of Scotland is, in some ways, stranger. In its early years, it was a straightforward Tory-versus-Liberals and then Tory-versus-Labour battleground, but after the Tory government of Jack Browne fell in 1960, the Tories spent 50 years steadily falling away as a party of power in Scotland due to the unpopularity of Thatcherism (especially given her efforts to defund, snatch power from or even abolish regional governments that tried to defy her monetarist policies); instead, the main conflict was between Labour and the nascent Scottish National Party (SNP), with the latter controlling the Parliament continuously since 2004 as Scots grew distasteful of Labour's centrist turn in recent decades. At the same time, under the moderate leadership of Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tories have risen to form the main opposition once more, though the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems have all expressed disgust at the concept of putting them into power anytime soon.
Regional governance within England did not flare up again as an issue until after the Attlee government took office in 1945, and ironically started with the Tories advocating for such assemblies to avoid monopolizing state power. Establishing such assemblies was a Tory policy plank in 1950, and once they came to power in 1951 Churchill's government created the Parliament of Anglia (covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk and Suffolk), the Parliament of the Home Counties (incorporating Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent, Oxfordshire and Sussex) and the Parliament of Wessex (containing Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and despite the objections of its residents, Cornwall).
It was not lost on Labour voters that the Tories had basically given the south the power to ignore a future Labour government's policies, but one of the few well-respected policy accomplishments of the Eden government was to create assemblies for the rest of England- the Parliament of the West Midlands (Cheshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire), the Parliament of the East Midlands (Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland), the Parliament of Lancashire, the Parliament of Yorkshire (both of which cover the same area as the historic counties) and the Parliament of Northumbria (County Durham, Cumberland, Northumberland and Westmorland).
Since then, most of these have been fairly competitive in their quadrennial elections (held every four years from 1956 onwards, though the 2020 elections have been postponed to 2021) and power has changed hands several times- as of 2020, Labour have control of Lancashire, Northumbria and Yorkshire while the Tories control both Midlands Parliaments. On top of that, aside from the Tories' sweep of all five Parliaments in 1968 and Labour's sweep of all five in 1996, no election has seen one party control all Midlands and northern Parliaments.
In this regard, the southern Parliaments were long considered more problematic, as the Tories ruled all of them from their first elections in 1953 until the Liberal-SDP Alliance took power in all three during their surge in 1981. All of these governments implemented proportional systems to replace the FPTP elections that had previously been held in the regions, and ironically, all three were turfed out by the Tories in the 1985 elections. Despite this, the Wessex Parliament used its power in an unconventional move that irked the Thatcher government immensely- it permitted Cornwall to found the Parliament of Cornwall in 1982 and split off from Wessex. Despite the de facto existence of the Cornish Parliament, the Government did not acknowledge its existence as a separate entity until Blair's government came in in 1997 the Tories refused to acknowledge it until David Cameron changed the party's policy in 2008.
While, in a majoritarian sense, the Tories are still dominant in the southern Parliaments- aside from the 1993 election in Anglia, they have been the biggest party in all the elections held there since PR was introduced- they do not have such a stranglehold on the politics of these assemblies as they previously did. Besides the 2009 election, they have consistently been forced to either form minority governments or cooperate with Lib Dem, Independent and UKIP MPs to retain power, and have been out of power on a few occasions since in each Parliament (1993-2001 in Anglia, where a Labour-Lib Dem coalition took control; 1997-2001 in Wessex, with the Lib Dems leading a coalition with independents; and 1993-1997 in the Home Counties, where Labour led a coalition with the Lib Dems). Cornwall, however, is a different story; the Thatcher and Major governments' attempts to encroach on its powers made the Tories greatly unpopular there until they finally took power in 2010, though that government has been re-elected twice in 2014 and 2018.
So this is a weird little electoral map I just made: it's a US election based on which era of Doctor Who was the first to air on TV networks in that state. The reason for the super-dark majority shades is because instead of the percent, they represent the decade the show was first aired.
281 EVs go to the Tom Baker era (blue), with the lighter majority shades being states whose networks got it in the 70s and the darker shades getting it in the 80s. (Incidentally, Idaho and Wyoming didn't get it to their own stations but could watch it being shown from Salt Lake City.)
183 EVs are for the Pertwee era (red), which was picked up sooner but was obviously only distributed in the 70s when (and for a while after) Pertwee was the current Doctor.
36 EVs from New York and Vermont are for the Hartnell era (grey), where viewers in certain regions could pick up the first few stories when they were being broadcast in Canada. The first time the show was actually broadcast by networks in those two states were Pertwee in the 70s for NY and Tom Baker in the 80s for VT.
34 EVs go to the Davison era (green); in all these states, the story in question was The Five Doctors, which also aired on numerous other networks in numerous other states but for these four was also the first episode known to have aired (though it didn't air in North Dakota until 1987, four years after that episode came out).
And 4 EVs from Hawaii go to the 1996 McGann movie (yellow), as the show was never circulated there until that movie's airing.
As far as the closest 'margin' goes, the Tom Baker stories only started airing in Tennessee 2 months before The Five Doctors aired there.
MaxGerke01
Banned
Could someone do the 1992-2016 electoral maps for US president in the Independence Day universe ?
independenceday.fandom.com
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests the...
This is Actually one of the more interesting apolitical maps I’ve seen here; cool! I learned some stuff from it too
So this is a weird little electoral map I just made: it's a US election based on which era of Doctor Who was the first to air on TV networks in that state. The reason for the super-dark majority shades is because instead of the percent, they represent the decade the show was first aired.
281 EVs go to the Tom Baker era (blue), with the lighter majority shades being states whose networks got it in the 70s and the darker shades getting it in the 80s. (Incidentally, Idaho and Wyoming didn't get it to their own stations but could watch it being shown from Salt Lake City.)
183 EVs are for the Pertwee era (red), which was picked up sooner but was obviously only distributed in the 70s when (and for a while after) Pertwee was the current Doctor.
36 EVs from New York and Vermont are for the Hartnell era (grey), where viewers in certain regions could pick up the first few stories when they were being broadcast in Canada. The first time the show was actually broadcast by networks in those two states were Pertwee in the 70s for NY and Tom Baker in the 80s for VT.
34 EVs go to the Davison era (green); in all these states, the story in question was The Five Doctors, which also aired on numerous other networks in numerous other states but for these four was also the first episode known to have aired (though it didn't air in North Dakota until 1987, four years after that episode came out).
And 4 EVs from Hawaii go to the 1996 McGann movie (yellow), as the show was never circulated there until that movie's airing.
As far as the closest 'margin' goes, the Tom Baker stories only started airing in Tennessee 2 months before The Five Doctors aired there.
EDIT: not to knock everybody else’s apolitical maps
This is Actually one of the more interesting apolitical maps I’ve seen here; cool! I learned some stuff from it too
EDIT: not to knock everybody else’s apolitical maps
Thank you, you're very kind!
I should probably credit where I got the info from, BroaDWcast. If you're interested in foreign distribution of Doctor Who, it's a really good site!This is a little follow-up with a slightly more political basis: the 'Dem' states are ones where Doctor Who was first circulated by PBS stations, the 'Rep' ones are states where it debuted on stations affiliated with commercial broadcasters (predominantly ABC and CBS) and the 'Ind' ones are states where it was first shown on independent networks (although some of them have since gone defunct, like in Ohio, or been bought by commercial broadcasters, like in Nevada). As with the last map, the majority shades are based on the decade it premiered.
Heh. You should give them the number of electoral votes they had when Doctor Who premiered in that state.
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1986 Governor Races from No Southern Strategy
Winners:
Alabama: Richard Shelby (D)
Alaska: Wally Hickel (I)
Arizona: Art Hamilton (D)
Arkansas: Bill Clinton (R)
California: Edward E. Clark (R)
Colorado: Hunter S. Thompson (FP)
Connecticut: Joseph Lieberman (D)
Florida: Jack Eckerd (R)
Georgia: Zell Miller (D)
Hawaii: D. G. Anderson (R)
Idaho: Marvin Thomas Richardson (NC)
Illinois: Adlai Stevenson III (D)
Iowa: Terry Branstad (R)
Kansas: Wendell Lady (R)
Maine: John Rensenbrink (D)
Maryland: Mary Pat Clarke (D)
Massachusetts: Elliot Richardson (R)
Michigan: William B. Fitzgerald, Jr. (D)
Minnesota: Skip Humphrey (D)
Nebraska: Virginia D. Smith (R)
Nevada: Carl F. Dodge (R)
New Hampshire: John A. Durkin (D)
New Mexico: Max Coll (R)
New York: Hugh Carey (D)
Ohio: Jerry Springer (D)
Oklahoma: Jim Barker (D)
Oregon: Les AuCoin (D)
Pennsylvania: R. Budd Dwyer (R)
Rhode Island: John J. Slocum, Jr. (R)
South Carolina: William J. B. Dorn (D)
South Dakota: Gene N. Lebrun (D)
Tennessee: Jim Sasser (D)
Texas: Ron Paul (R)
Vermont: Franklin S. Billings Jr. (R)
Wisconsin: Doug La Follette (D)
Wyoming: Clifford P. Hansen (R)
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