Questions About Other Countries' Politics that You Were Too Afraid To Ask

[Filuwaúrdjan]

7. But perhaps this is not a coincidence: an outsider may well be preferred to a more locally-rooted candidate from one of the other towns.

I've seen something similar as a possible explanation for the curious fact that none of the last three Orkney & Shetland MPs have been from either Orkney or Shetland.

Huh, that makes some sense. Particularly given that, when you split them up, that curiosity goes away.

I cannot go into that much detail, but I am aware of a conversation that occurred at an event held at a well-known museum in Dudley to launch a book written by a well-known figure born in Walsall. This conversation entailed the bookseller hired for the event wondering whether it would make sense for the museum to buy a few copies from the publisher for its own shop and the senior member of museum staff they were talking to expressing the view that, as nice an idea as that sounded as the person in question was from Walsall there would be no demand for the book in Dudley.

[Oryxslayer]

I guess I'll provide the obvious follow-up to the Black Country Question: Is it really still the case?

Yes, there are plenty of examples worldwide of adjacent economic cores developing differently, maintaining differences, and ending up in different places with different cultures. And those cultures like to persist even when the resident populations shift and times change. There's no denying that.

However, in the modern age where everyone wants to be in or near a city, cause that's where the good paying jobs are, areas that might have once been distinct end up in an unholy mess of urbanization. The most obvious example that springs to my mind is San Francisco and Oakland, but there are many, many more worldwide.

It's not that hard to get past census data to examine this. As a percentage of the resident working age population, you still see larger shares commuters coming in the from the areas to the north, east, and south of Birmingham - the Black County does provide for some of her own. But in terms of raw people, Sandwell, Walsall, and Dudley are numbers 2 through 4 in terms of thousands of commuters to Birmingham. Sandwell is only surpassed slightly by Solihull. Conversely, as a sign of the urban integration, people from Birmingham go in the other direction for work. Solihull has the number one spot by far for Birmingham -> somewhere else, but Sandwell and Walsall are 2 and 3.

[CumbrianLefty]

I mean, the Black Country has its own flag and everything

[EastAnglianLefty]

Though of course Tom Watson is from Kidderminster, which is at least vaguely in the same area.

It's probably ideal, really. Kiddy is within the broader cultural region, but is certainly not part of the Black Country and so you are at once not exactly an outsider but also nowhere the wrong kind of local.

And Kidderminster is if anything even more insular than the Black Country, so the context is familiar.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Since I'm going to Italy next week:

-How do the parties in the right coalition differ?  Especially Lega (Salvini) versus FDI (Meloni).

-Where does M5S fit in?  Is it basically the replacement for PD in the South of Italy?

-Why is Rome relatively conservative, with Lazio even a right-leaning region?  And, why are Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna the only two more left-leaning regions in the North of Italy?  It seems like there's a general trend towards well-off areas liking the right, so those two surprise me a bit.  Is E-R just about Bologna being the Berkeley of Italy?

[Oryxslayer]

Since I'm going to Italy next week:

-How do the parties in the right coalition differ?  Especially Lega (Salvini) versus FDI (Meloni).

-Where does M5S fit in?  Is it basically the replacement for PD in the South of Italy?

-Why is Rome relatively conservative, with Lazio even a right-leaning region?  And, why are Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna the only two more left-leaning regions in the North of Italy?  It seems like there's a general trend towards well-off areas liking the right, so those two surprise me a bit.  Is E-R just about Bologna being the Berkeley of Italy?

I'm not an expert on Italian politics, but since there are relatively simple questions I'll bite and a local can give a more detailed explanation.

Basically, it's all history influencing the present. Today there may be few differences between Lega and FdI, M5S and PD might be strange bedfellows, and the rural leftism of E-R and Tuscany seems weird, but placed in history they all make sense.

The first two start to make sense if you know how northern Italy is noticeably ahead of Southern Italy is basically every relevant metric.

Lega was until recently Lega Nord, which flirted between regionalism for the north versus the "wasteful" south and separatism for 'Padania.' Their instinctive base of support though positioned the party on the right, and often found itself within the orbit of Berlusconi. The party had close to zero support in the provinces they bothered to contest south of the Po. Scandals, infighting, and new generations not as committed to their brand of regionalism led to a dismal result in 2013 and eventually Salvini taking over the party. He rebranded it to Lega, reoriented the party around euro-skepticism and anti-migrant politics, and you probably know what happened next. They shockingly finished ahead of Berlusconi in 2018, formed the Yellow-Green government, and became the tail that wagged the dog while in power. Lega under Salvini has slowly tried to build southern support - peaking in 2019 with the EU Election Lega landslide that carried numerous southern communities. Since then this support has mostly receded but not to zero.

Note: this is the national Lega story, locally the regional bosses of northern strongholds are still mostly from before Salvini's time and at times take different approaches cause of their deeper community ties.

FdI meanwhile comes from a very different political tradition. The party is the successor to the neo-Fascist MSI and then the post-Fascistic National Alliance. The party, symbol - the tricolour flame - is inherited from those two. They have always done better in Rome, the center, and other specific parts of the south. Initially this is cause of different reactions to the war, but as decades passed and the specifics changed more towards "standard" conservative nostalgia for a 'simpler' past (Meloni is a big LoTR fan for example) it found support in their southern areas because of the economic divide and Christian social traditionalism. Especially once the Christian Democratic electoral behemoth collapsed in scandal. They were at times part of Berlusconi's alliances, but never too strong of a force. FdI like Lega formed out of a bad 2013 result and like Lega took steps to 'modernize' the party. What really kicked the party into power though was the chaos of the various M5S backed governments since 2018 and especially COVID. FdI was the only party to stick to opposition during that period and since everyone tarnished themselves, they were the main alternative.

M5S is much more simple. Started as a pure protest party founded by comedian Beppe Grillo before the Euro Crisis. Their main unifying ideology was anti-system and in favor of more popular say in government  (and their party). They grew during the Euro crisis and especially in economically struggling areas disgusted with politics - most notably the south. In some ways they were a protest party which grew beyond it's own control. This culminated in 2018 with the country rejecting both main alternatives in a anti-migrant environment and seemingly wanting to try M5S. But the predictable thing happened and a party unprepared for power found itself fumbling, flowing from crisis to crisis, and exploited by it's changing coalition partners. Always tilting left economically, the cannibalization of voters by Lega during their government years left the party with few voters who saw themselves as more right than left. Even though M5S and PD don't see fully eye to eye, they ally when in benefits them both cause their voters these days have more in common than with the Right. Sometimes it works out like recently in Sardinia.

E-R and Tuscany are usually PD/Left strongholds cause of legacy identities. Like rural southern France or Andalucía of past decades, the identities here were forged during the years of conflict. Areas strong for left-wing partisans allowed them to build community networks and support structures that persisted down the generations. The legacy of such groups and generations of culture has influenced the cultures and identity of those in the present.

[palandio]

[...]
E-R and Tuscany are usually PD/Left strongholds cause of legacy identities. Like rural southern France or Andalucía of past decades, the identities here were forged during the years of conflict. Areas strong for left-wing partisans allowed them to build community networks and support structures that persisted down the generations. The legacy of such groups and generations of culture has influenced the cultures and identity of those in the present.

Solid post. One minor addition: The term "left-wing partisans" might give the idea that this is mostly WWII-related. And while WWII of course played a major role in forming regional structures and identities, "years of conflict" extends decades further into the past (e.g. the Biennio Rosso and its suppression, but even further into the past). As fellow Atlassian Battista Minola once explained, original left-wing strength in rural E-R and Tuscany is linked to mezzadria, a particular form of sharecropping. See here: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=294475.1750

Regarding the PD-M5S cleavage I'd like to shamelessly promote an old post of mine:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=294475.msg8745219#msg8745219



edit: Another good post by Alcibiades: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=294475.msg8787112#msg8787112

[Battista Minola 1616]

Since I'm going to Italy next week:

-How do the parties in the right coalition differ?  Especially Lega (Salvini) versus FDI (Meloni).

-Where does M5S fit in?  Is it basically the replacement for PD in the South of Italy?

-Why is Rome relatively conservative, with Lazio even a right-leaning region?  And, why are Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna the only two more left-leaning regions in the North of Italy?  It seems like there's a general trend towards well-off areas liking the right, so those two surprise me a bit.  Is E-R just about Bologna being the Berkeley of Italy?

#1 I think I am going crazy with how often this question comes up. Oryx covered their histories... fine (until halfway into the FdI section, coming back to that). As of their current policies they have somewhat different approaches to things the justice system and regionalism for historical reasons, but their main difference is probably just that Meloni has been trying to build an image as a dependable mainstream conservative and Salvini is busy acting out his role as a shouting buffoon barely concealing his Russian sympathies.

#1b The MSI's and later AN's base of support never really stopped being defined by original post-fascist sympathies and, more visibly later (like at the AN's peak in 1996, of which Al made a map once) it was not necessarily poor, if anything skewing bourgeois in cities. This incidentally is the exact opposite of Lega Nord. The Meloni Tolkien thing leads to a very strange and fascinating rabbithole about neofascist circles but I wouldn't use it to talk about party voters in general.

#2 No, no, no, no and no. But also in an awkward way... they are two parties with very contrasting characteristics (the PD is the partial heir to the two largest political traditions of the so-called First Republic while the M5S is a novel party almost completely unrelated to what came before; the PD is the most institutionalist party while the M5S was founded on being very strongly anti-system; the PD is incredibly factionalist while the M5S never stops being a personality party even though it's been that for at least three different personalities; the PD has a lot of respected local administrators but nobody who knows how to campaign while the M5S has a lot of cranks but incredibly effective populist campaigns in national elections; etc.) which have converged on the same side of not being the Right. That said keep in mind the M5S vote is a lot more Southern than the PD vote is Northern.

#3 Rome is not really relatively conservative (in 2022 it voted twelve points to the left, so to speak, of the country as a whole!), however it is massive and includes a lot of suburban areas the equivalent of which would be separate municipalities elsewhere, and it has a strong post-fascist tradition for reasons that are probably obvious. The rest of Lazio is genuinely rather right-wing - it's a middle-income region without that much industrial history, large cities or universities while again having post-fascist traditions, especially in the Latina area a large amount of which are marshlands that were drained under Mussolini. Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna are... see my post that palandio linked plus discussion of cultural legacies. Nowadays there have been a lot of internal changes and yes, the massive and fairly activist university presence in Bologna nets the PD and allies a lot of votes as well (to a smaller extent also true of Pisa or Florence - note that a long time ago in the 1950s the cores of these cities were conversely much less Communist than their industrial surroundings). However I did not understand the tone of your question. Did you expect a North to South, right to left gradient or something like that?

[YL]

I guess I'll provide the obvious follow-up to the Black Country Question: Is it really still the case?

Yes, there are plenty of examples worldwide of adjacent economic cores developing differently, maintaining differences, and ending up in different places with different cultures. And those cultures like to persist even when the resident populations shift and times change. There's no denying that.

However, in the modern age where everyone wants to be in or near a city, cause that's where the good paying jobs are, areas that might have once been distinct end up in an unholy mess of urbanization. The most obvious example that springs to my mind is San Francisco and Oakland, but there are many, many more worldwide.

It's not that hard to get past census data to examine this. As a percentage of the resident working age population, you still see larger shares commuters coming in the from the areas to the north, east, and south of Birmingham - the Black County does provide for some of her own. But in terms of raw people, Sandwell, Walsall, and Dudley are numbers 2 through 4 in terms of thousands of commuters to Birmingham. Sandwell is only surpassed slightly by Solihull. Conversely, as a sign of the urban integration, people from Birmingham go in the other direction for work. Solihull has the number one spot by far for Birmingham -> somewhere else, but Sandwell and Walsall are 2 and 3.

If you look at the official Travel to Work Areas you will note that there is a Birmingham TTWA which extends from the city north to Tamworth and south to Redditch and Bromsgrove and also includes urban Solihull (Solihull proper plus Chelmsley Wood and Castle Bromwich). None of this is very surprising.

There is also a Dudley TTWA which includes pretty much all of that borough together with a few adjoining areas in Staffordshire and Worcestershire together with most of Sandwell: Oldbury, West Brom, Tipton and Wednesbury. Then there is a rather extensive Wolverhampton & Walsall TTWA which includes pretty much all of the former and most of the latter, but also extends all the way to Lichfield and Cannock as well as west towards Telford (but not getting that far).

There are however bits of the "Black Country boroughs" which are in the Birmingham TTWA. Some of these are I think really spillover of genuine Birmingham suburbia and not really part of the Black Country in spite of the administrative boundary: Pheasey, Streetly, Great Barr. Then there's Smethwick, which I think is usually regarded as Black Country but more associated with Birmingham than the rest of it, and then some of the Warley area to the south of it which was also part of the old Smethwick borough.

However that link does also show you some "alternative TTWAs" using some subsets of occupations, and it does in fact turn out that for some of the higher status ones (e.g. the high qualifications one) the Birmingham, Dudley and Wolverhampton/Walsall TTWAs do all merge into one (but Coventry stays separate). And some weird things happen for some of the others too.

[LabourJersey]

Random question for the French political posters--

Why does there seem to be no Christian Democracy party or movement in France the way there is/was in Germany, Netherlands, Italy etc?

Is it because Guallism occupied that "lane" politically?

And where would Christian Democrats go now, since LR is not exactly a party that cares about christian democratic traditions and politics?

[CumbrianLefty]

Wasn't d'Estaing basically a Christian Democrat?

[Lechasseur]

Random question for the French political posters--

Why does there seem to be no Christian Democracy party or movement in France the way there is/was in Germany, Netherlands, Italy etc?

Is it because Guallism occupied that "lane" politically?

And where would Christian Democrats go now, since LR is not exactly a party that cares about christian democratic traditions and politics?

During the 4th Republic, the Christian Democratic party was named the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (MRP) and were quite influential.

They did end up declining after the creation of the 5th Republic, and their successor party, the Centre Démocrate, ended up merging into UDF (Giscard's party) in the 1970s. Raymond Barre and François Bayrou for instance I believe were affiliated to the CDS (Centre des Démocrates Sociaux), the Christian Democratic faction of the UDF.

With the decline of the UDF from the mid-1990s onwards and the creation of the UMP and the Nouveau Centre in the 2000s, I'd imagine a lot of voters who would have been Christian Democrats elsewhere (and certainly many of the politicians) would have left the UDF for one of those two parties, especially with Bayrou's increasingly social-liberal turn.

In my opinion, there isn't any good option for Christian Democrats in France these days, but the Macroniste Ensemble alliance may be the least poor fit for them these days.

And to answer your question, I think it is likely that without De Gaulle or another similar figure on the right taking up a quasi-founding father status, it is likely Christian Democracy would have been much stronger longer term in France. However, given French culture around laicité, the Christian Democrats would probably have never used that named, instead going with names similar to those I mentioned earlier like CDS.

[Lechasseur]

Wasn't d'Estaing basically a Christian Democrat?

VGE I believe was ideologically a right-wing liberal, in the continental European sense.

But he would have been the candidate of most christian democratic voters in the 1970s-1980s, and the UDF would have been their party, due to his pro-europeanism and his alliance with their movement, among other things.

The UDF was essentially an alliance of right-wing liberals, christian democrats, and other non-socialists who didn't fit into the Gaullist movement.

[Lechasseur]

In practice though, by the 1980s, while there were still some differences between the two right-wing parties in France, I think the bigger differences were more between the centrist and conservative factions of each party than between each other (for example I'd say Alain Juppé of RPR, while not have identical views to him, would have had more in common with fellow centrist François Bayrou of UDF than hard right-wingers like Charles Pasqua in RPR).

And to the contrary, you had some very solid conservatives in UDF like Charles Millon or Philippe De Villiers who would have been more similar to Pasqua than to Bayrou.

By the mid-late 1980s, the UDF and RPR had increasingly turned into, and were seen by the public as such, as electoral machines for the leaders, Giscard and Chirac respectively, rather than coherent ideological movements.

It's kind of not for nothing that after Giscard and UDF clearly lost the battle of dominance to Chirac and the RPR, that it was only a matter of time until most UDF MPs merged into the UMP in 2002.

[Battista Minola 1616]

Random question for the French political posters--

Why does there seem to be no Christian Democracy party or movement in France the way there is/was in Germany, Netherlands, Italy etc?

Is it because Guallism occupied that "lane" politically?

And where would Christian Democrats go now, since LR is not exactly a party that cares about christian democratic traditions and politics?

In addition to what Lechasseur said, political Catholicism in France had a stronger association with a reactionary established order than in Germany, Italy or the Netherlands, which I think limited the ability to function of the MRP (about which there's a famous quote that it pursued left-wing policies with a right-wing electorate).

If you allow me some cynicism, the answer to the last question is "underground", plus LR is no less a bad fit for Christian democracy than say Fratelli d'Italia (which is very possibly the plurality party among ex-DC voters in Italy right now).

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

How did Flanby, Brenda (RIP), and Brian get these seemingly unrelated names? Are they just Atlas-isms or are they more widely used?

[morgieb]

How did Flanby, Brenda (RIP), and Brian get these seemingly unrelated names? Are they just Atlas-isms or are they more widely used?

Brenda and Brian aren't from Atlas, but Private Eye and vastly predates Atlas. From what I understand it's down to treating the Royal Family like characters in a soap opera.

The nicknames for the Frenchies (think Flanby, Poison Dwarf, Panzergirl, Panzerdaddy, Panzermiss, FBM, etc.) I think are all Atlas-isms though, but I'm willing to say I could be wrong as they all date back to the late 2000's bar Flawles Beautiful Macron which I think is an ironic take on his media adoration?

[Battista Minola 1616]

How did Flanby, Brenda (RIP), and Brian get these seemingly unrelated names? Are they just Atlas-isms or are they more widely used?

Brenda and Brian aren't from Atlas, but Private Eye and vastly predates Atlas. From what I understand it's down to treating the Royal Family like characters in a soap opera.

The nicknames for the Frenchies (think Flanby, Poison Dwarf, Panzergirl, Panzerdaddy, Panzermiss, FBM, etc.) I think are all Atlas-isms though, but I'm willing to say I could be wrong as they all date back to the late 2000's bar Flawles Beautiful Macron which I think is an ironic take on his media adoration?

Flanby for François Hollande has nothing to do with Atlas, it is an insult created by his political opponents that even predates his presidency - French Wikipedia reports it as being coined by Montebourg in 2003. I can also find references elsewhere to Sarkozy being called a "poison dwarf" but not their origin. FBM and the Panzer-based nicknames should definitely be Atlas-isms however.

[CumbrianLefty]

How did Flanby, Brenda (RIP), and Brian get these seemingly unrelated names? Are they just Atlas-isms or are they more widely used?

Brenda and Brian aren't from Atlas, but Private Eye and vastly predates Atlas. From what I understand it's down to treating the Royal Family like characters in a soap opera.

There was a TV series in (I think) the late 1960s which seemed to be designed to present the royals as "normal" people - apparently they decided that it backfired on them and discouraged any further attempts at that sort of thing. But in response the Eye thought up its mickey taking "normal" names for them - and these have endured to the present day.

[pikachu]

Why does Australia seem to have so many fewer Asians and nonwhites generally in politics compared to Canada, the UK, and US? The current cabinet is strikingly white, especially for a liberal/left party.

[Sol]

Why does Australia seem to have so many fewer Asians and nonwhites generally in politics compared to Canada, the UK, and US? The current cabinet is strikingly white, especially for a liberal/left party.

Xahar put forth an interesting theory here:

My second set of questions is more directly political. If we were in Britain or Canada, a large area like this populated by a particular minority group would be full of politicians from that minority group. There are plenty of parliamentary electorates in this area (Muslims form the largest individual religious group in the federal divisions of Blaxland and Watson), and yet there's only one Muslim MP from Sydney in the NSW Legislative Assembly and none at all in the federal House of Representatives. (Anne Aly did grow up in the Muslim region in question, but she lives in and represents a Perth constituency.) Rather than being fiefdoms of dodgy ethnic power brokers like in London, these constituencies are sinecures for Labor apparatchiki in need of safe seats.

On some level I think this has to do with a phenomenon I discussed, which is that even young Muslims in western Sydney do not really seem to identify with the Australian state or society. People are informed about politics, but the level of political engagement in society is remarkably low. There are no ethnic political machines. Ordinarily this would be an issue for Labor, but because voting is compulsory in Australia, those people will all come vote whether the Labor Party activates them or not, and because Australia has preferential voting these people will all vote for the Labor candidate over the Liberal candidate. It's an unusual set of circumstances where there's no incentive on anyone's part for these people to be involved in politics.

Can't attest to it's validity, but it seems rational to me.

[wnwnwn]

On Spain:

1 Why CDS couldn´t consolidate the spanish center right and instead lose to People's Alliance?
2 The United Left had its best results in the 90s. Why and who were its supporters? Also, why the party lose support in the next decades?
3 How different are the Ayuso wing of the PP and VOX?

On Peru, ask me anything.

[wnwnwn]

Why do so many Latin American countries have completely new parties every election?

Most parties in the region are just personalist vehicles or a group of politicians that try to survivie. Some have clear ideologies, like PAN (always the right of Mexico).
I think that the coups of state usually destroy some parties or particular moments.
For example, Peru was in its way to be a four party sstem in the 80s, until the crisis made Fujimori run in a populist outsider campaing with covered support from APRA and anti-RW voters. The, the political system became a mess.
In Colombia, they had a long time party system of two parties. Then, the rests of the various uribists vehicles and the growht of the lefty Democratic Pole and other minor parties have created a big mess.
In Chile, there are stable parties who formed for years the two main alliances, but also scicions and random new parties. Either a new system of four alliances become stable or a new mess appears.

[kaoras]

On Spain:

1 Why CDS couldn´t consolidate the spanish center right and instead lose to People's Alliance?
2 The United Left had its best results in the 90s. Why and who were its supporters? Also, why the party lose support in the next decades?
3 How different are the Ayuso wing of the PP and VOX?

On Peru, ask me anything.

1.- I would say that Spanish politics naturally tend to polarization. The meme answer is that they have never stopped fighting the civil war but there is some truth in that, especially in the 80's. The CDS occupied a niche of equidistance between the then-dominant PSOE and AP, especially among voters that didn't like PSOE but were wary of AP franqouist image. Its decline is usually attributed to the decision to start supporting AP against PSOE (most notably in Madrid). This, along with the modernization of AP into PP led by Aznar (he declared that PP was a party of the "reformist" center) meant that his support collapsed as most people preferred to vote for the real deal (similar to what happened with C's recently) who now had a cleaner image.

2.- IU support in the 90's was plain and simple protest votes from the left unhappy with PSOE centrist turn (Many examples of which the most infamous for its cheer audacity would be the OTAN u-turn, also deindustrialization) and their neverending avalanche of corruption cases. IU positioned itself as a strong independent alternative to voters unhappy with PSOE but who would never vote for the right. Its decline is directly related to increased polarization between the bipartidism and subsequent need for "voto util" to PSOE over the next decade.

About Perú, why APRA used to be so strong in the northwest? I'm talking about Cajamarca, La Libertad, etc. And what happened to their old base?

[wnwnwn]

About Perú, why APRA used to be so strong in the northwest? I'm talking about Cajamarca, La Libertad, etc. And what happened to their old base?

APRA started as a populist movement agaisnt the Lima elite. Haya de la Torre (party founder) was from La Libertad and locals supported him. Outside of the antiimperialist ideas and the violence agaisnt the regimes of the time, the party could be seen as a reformism between the conservatism championed by Lima's upper class and the communists. Also, it carried an urban mestizo identity that appealed a lot of people in the north. In the 40s, 50s, the violence ended and their members focused in running the organization, establishing "popular hair salons" and making their local comitees united. The universities had aprist leaded student groups, students were recruited to the party.
The party base was therefore proud people from the North, specially from La Libertad, lambayeque and Cajamarca departments. Cajamarca is an andean region/department, but a somehow mestizo and long time spanish speaking one. There is even an sort of stereotype that all/most light skinned peruvians of rural origin are from Cajamarca.
Between the 30s and 2011, the party changed from left to center left to center right to center left to alanist left to centre right to alanist centre left to alanist centre right. Even some supporters of Alan in the late 80s became later hardline right wingers (for example, Jorge Del Castillo).
Meanwhile, the party consolidated since the 60s sorts of machines. But the time passed and as the older generations died and Alan finally lose its electability, the party became less and less and less popular. After all the changes, the APRA of 2011 was a right wing party that was way less appealing that other right wing parties. Also, since the 60s/70s, the aprists started losing power at the universities and therefore recruit material. The disaster of the first Alan presidency destroyed the credibility of it as a center left project, and the second goverment was a negation of its intented fundational principles. The provincial wings of the party were seen as the old residues of machine they were and are, losing to whatever new project. The party image was destroyed.

In the north, the party was a big coalition, so I think this is how they went:
- The leftists: Some changed their views. Others, specially in Cajamarca, started to support the leftists candidate of the moment. The peruvian left has an andean image, which works well there. Castillo won his region by a lot.
- The moderates: A good part of them went into APP, a personal vehicle of Acuña (the controversial owner of some for-profit colleges), his family and the other candidates of the moment. The party has a centrist image, but allies with the right. Acuña is particulary popular in La Libertad for his tenure as governor, so his support there is widespread.
- The right leanings?: This is mostly people who somehow changed their old views after the crisis of the late 80s and the relative growht of the last years. They usually support Fujimori. They are the reason why Keiko does so well in the coastal north.
In 2021, Keiko won Lambayeque, Castillo won Cajamarca and Acuña won La Libertad in the first round.