Luxembourg general election: October 14, 2018

[Diouf]

As I understand it, some of these results are list votes only, but this shouldn't make much of a difference. The election system seems similar to the Czech local elections; you can either vote for a party list, who has as many candidates as there are seats, or you can vote for candidates from different parties (with as many votes as there are seats). I would think most people vote list votes, but if some parties have popular personalities, they could probably increase once the non list votes come in.

[Diouf]

Could the government keep its majority after all?

[Diouf]

Voters rated all parties from -5 to +5, and these are the average values. Voters were also asked about government and opposition as a whole. So government as a whole fairly popular (more than each party individually). All three government parties with the best average popularity (perhaps lifting each other up). ADR only party with net negative rating.

[Diouf]

I don't know much about how well the government had functioned internally. I guess LSAP is the only party that could have any doubts regarding a continuation of the coalition, but hard to see them prefer junior status to CSV or opposition status over continuing with the current government.

[Diouf]

The official projection is now 30-30 for government vs. opposition!

[Diouf]

A seat in South shifted from Pirates to Greens. 31-29 lead for government now

[Diouf]

Seats in the South are jumping back and forward, but now mostly between the government parties. Nailbiting count! Only 37 polling places back, who haven't counted the candidate vote results yet. I thought this government would be clearly defeated. They were down at 24 seats in mid-term polls, and even recent polls had them at only 26 seats.

[Diouf]

It seems quite safe now that the government's percentage of the votes will rise. From 48.66% in 2013 to currently 49.53%.

[Diouf]

Full Luxembourg City results in.

DP is now the largest party in the capital with a status quo result at 26.73%. CSV suffers clear losses and fall to 26.68%. Significant progress for Greens to 16.78%, while LSAP fall somewhat to 10.99%. Moderate progress for ADR and Lenk to end on 6.09 and 6.78% respectively. Pirates "only" progress to 4.65%. This is 2% below their national result, so surprisingly not a capital phenomena. Perhaps the capital is too expensive for their kind of voters?

[Diouf]

Only personal votes left in 4 polling stations, all in the South. All 3 in Leudelange and 1 in Esch-sur-Alzette.

[Diouf]

Still waiting for 3 polling stations from Leideleng/Leudelange......

[Diouf]

Final results are in. Government keeps its majority! And it even increases its share of the vote. Not a very usual results in Western Europe in these years.

DP 12 seats (-1)
LSAP 10 seats (-3)
Greens 9 seats (+3)

CSV 21 seats (-2)
ADR 4 seats (+1)
Left 2 seats (=)
Pirates 2 seats (+2)

[Diouf]

The electoral system is quite brutal for LSAP, who makes quite small losses (-2.68%) but loses 3 seats. They even remained the biggest government party in terms of vote share. When you have a proportional system, I think it would make sense to save a share of the seats to ensure national proportionality. Also not a superfan of the "choose as many candidates as seats in the region" system.

Seems like the personalized votes were better for the government than list votes. Perhaps some of the government supporters decided to spread their love across the government parties. Or simply having more prominent persons (ministers) helped them.

[Diouf]

Tried to calculate how it would look with Danish electoral rules. The government only ends up with 30 seats as déi Lénk wins the final seat very narrowly ahead of DP.

[Diouf]

The government was officially sworn in today.

The parties all held extraordinary congresses yesterday, where the coalition agreement was supported. DP and Dei Greng supported it without much ado, but there were quite some tension in LSAP. The youth wing of the party stated that they could not support the agreement. Also there were dissatisfaction in the Eastern part of the party since Tess Burton, who is vice president of the JS (young socialists) in the east and her party’s second most popular candidate in the east, did not become Minister, but the LSAP leadership chose the older and unelected Paulette Lenert instead.

http://delano.lu/d/detail/news/schneider-gets-health-government-takes-oath/197700

http://delano.lu/d/detail/news/socialists-face-youth-revolt/197604

[Diouf]

Luxembourg to become first country to make all public transport free

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/05/luxembourg-to-become-first-country-to-make-all-public-transport-free