Haven't seen a thread but Belgium has a couple elections the same day as the EU elections. This will be the first election since a pack of constitutional reforms, including:
- the end of direct elections to the senate
- 5 year term limits
- the abolition of a very controversial district in Brussels and its surrounding area, which lumped the bilingual capital with its Dutch surroundings. Now Brussels will have its own constituency.
- devolution of power to the German-speaking community, to Brussels and to local and regional governments generally
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_federal_election,_2014
Elio Di Rupo is reasonably popular, but the main story of this election seems to be the continued rise of the Flemish seperatist party N-VA, at the expense of the hard-right Vlaams Belang mainly.
The states also have their own elections:
In
Flanders, N-VA are expected to take the plurality with a meteoric rise from their 13% in 2009. This seems to be mainly at the expense of Vlaams and "Others". The mainstream three parties have small (but not catastrophic declines); while Workers and Greens are expected to rise. I guess this will possibly end up as a N-VA/ CD coalition.
Waloonia - All the current represented parties - including the traffic light governing coalition and the centre-right opposition seem to be suffering at the expense of new right-wing and left-wing (Workers and Peoples respectively) populist parties. The Socialsts continue to dominate, but its partner Ecolo has lost half its support since last election.
In the insane world of the Brussels government, similar declines are reported for the traffic light coalition (especially Ecolo) at the expense of newbies the Workers and the FDF. The FDF is a French regionalist split from the centre-right opposition.
The German-speaking community also have an election.
