Norway Polls

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

...who could explain what is going on with Fremskrittspartiet? Why are they sinking like rocks in oppinion polls at the moment?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Really ? It's surprising indeed to see a far-right party sinking in the polls, by these times...

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Really ? It's surprising indeed to see a far-right party sinking in the polls, by these times...

Yep since November last year they've fallen from about 25% support to around 15%

http://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/politikk/valg09/partibarometeret-2677103.html

[Antonio the Sixth]

Interesting... It also seems Hoyre is back as the main right-wing party and is even tied with Labour.

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_local_elections,_2011

There are local elections. Perhaps people are moving into a local mindset???

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

Scandal

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/04/15/post-scandal-polls-hit-progress-party/

Division

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/06/10/progress-party-falls-to-new-poll-low/


More on the Scandal:
http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/03/24/sex-scandal-threatens-progress-party/
http://www.norwaypost.no/political/progress-party-hit-by-sex-scandal-24942-24942-24942.html

[joevsimp]

I remember attempting to read VG online a while ago (my partner is Norwegian and attempting to teach me) and gathering that the head of FrP's youth wing had got into hot water over something, can't remember what it was of the top of my head though, not that I'm sad to see them go,

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Thank you Teddy, that explains it. Very kind of you to find those links.

So FrP is sinking like rocks, Høyre doing really well, the Red-Greens are on decline. Very promising trends. Just a pity there isn't another general election for two years, so both Jensen and Stoltenberg has time to recover.

 

 

[Antonio the Sixth]

Thank you Teddy, that explains it. Very kind of you to find those links.

So FrP is sinking like rocks, Høyre doing really well, the Red-Greens are on decline. Very promising trends. Just a pity there isn't another general election for two years, so both Jensen and Stoltenberg has time to recover.

Indeed, fortunately.

[Gustaf]

"Trond Birkedal’s high consumption of young boys for the past two years,”

I really hope that is some sort of poor translation.

[freefair]

Liberals and the Christian Peoples Party experiencing seemingly no change.
Keeping a low profile perhaps?

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

Meh, I didn't do anything special, just typed in "Norway Progress Party Poll drop" into google and clicked around the first page of results When I realized it was a scandal, I then typed in "Norway Progress Party Scandal" and clicked around there

[redcommander]

Could someone explain to me why the Norwegian Labor Party has been in power continuously since the 1920's?

[Gustaf]

Could someone explain to me why the Norwegian Labor Party has been in power continuously since the 1920's?

They haven't? They were continuously in power upto 1964, if memory serves, when they lost their absolute majority. Since then they have been gradually weakened. Kåre Willoch led a number of centre-right governments in the 80s, I believe. After the Jaglandt ultimatum they lost a lot of ground and has become more and more marginalized in recent years.

Originally, they were strong in much the same way as Social Democrats in general in Scandinavia. 

[redcommander]

Could someone explain to me why the Norwegian Labor Party has been in power continuously since the 1920's?

They haven't? They were continuously in power upto 1964, if memory serves, when they lost their absolute majority. Since then they have been gradually weakened. Kåre Willoch led a number of centre-right governments in the 80s, I believe. After the Jaglandt ultimatum they lost a lot of ground and has become more and more marginalized in recent years.

Originally, they were strong in much the same way as Social Democrats in general in Scandinavia. 

Ah my mistake, I was just looking through some old election results, and they've been the largest party in parliament since the 1920's.

[Gustaf]

Could someone explain to me why the Norwegian Labor Party has been in power continuously since the 1920's?

They haven't? They were continuously in power upto 1964, if memory serves, when they lost their absolute majority. Since then they have been gradually weakened. Kåre Willoch led a number of centre-right governments in the 80s, I believe. After the Jaglandt ultimatum they lost a lot of ground and has become more and more marginalized in recent years.

Originally, they were strong in much the same way as Social Democrats in general in Scandinavia. 

Ah my mistake, I was just looking through some old election results, and they've been the largest party in parliament since the 1920's.

Right. Since Norway is a multi-party system that doesn't necessarily equate being in power.

[minionofmidas]

"Marginalized" means something else, Gustaf.

But indeed, while still always the largest party, usually by comfortable margins and (in so far as there is such a thing, in Norway or anywhere) the natural party of government*, they are far from having been in power continuously, and tend to marginally lose votes at every election.

There have been non-Labour-led governments in 1963 (failed after one month), 1965-71, 72-3, 83-6, 89-90, 97-2000 and 2001-5.

*Why that is so? Why, because the bourgeoisie is splintered into several parties. As everywhere in Scandinavia, though details differ from country to country.

[Gustaf]

"Marginalized" means something else, Gustaf.

But indeed, while still always the largest party, usually by comfortable margins and (in so far as there is such a thing, in Norway or anywhere) the natural party of government*, they are far from having been in power continuously, and tend to marginally lose votes at every election.

There have been non-Labour-led governments in 1963 (failed after one month), 1965-71, 72-3, 83-6, 89-90, 97-2000 and 2001-5.

*Why that is so? Why, because the bourgeoisie is splintered into several parties. As everywhere in Scandinavia, though details differ from country to country.

I think they're marginalized. While they still have a lot of votes they're out of the loop of what's going on politically. Admittedly, not as much as here in Sweden though.

Social Democratic parties in Scandinavia were largely built around always being in power and dominating political discourse. Now that they don't anymore they tend to flail around quite a bit. Here in Sweden it seems to be the Greens who are picking up the banner for the general left.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Well, the Norwegian Labour is in power since 2005 and has been confirmed in power in 2009, so it's probably not that marginalized.

[Gustaf]

Well, the Norwegian Labour is in power since 2005 and has been confirmed in power in 2009, so it's probably not that marginalized.

Well...fine, I was engaged in excessive hyperbole.

They did win only due to quirks of the system, as I recall though (they actually lost the popular vote, but Norway has a very weird electoral system). It's also because they broadened their alliance to include the Center Party which used to be part of the right-wing coalition in Norway.

Social Democracy seems very lost to me, but I guess it's less true in Norway right now than it is in Sweden.

[minionofmidas]

They did win only due to quirks of the system, as I recall though (they actually lost the popular vote, but Norway has a very weird electoral system).

No.

Oh, you meant the coalition of Social Democrats, Socialists and Centre versus one of all four opposition parties (formation of which would have been quite difficult). Yes actually, but the "quirk" consists of the Liberals dropping below the threshold for national representation (though saving two constituency seats).

[Gustaf]

They did win only due to quirks of the system, as I recall though (they actually lost the popular vote, but Norway has a very weird electoral system).

No.

Oh, you meant the coalition of Social Democrats, Socialists and Centre versus one of all four opposition parties (formation of which would have been quite difficult). Yes actually, but the "quirk" consists of the Liberals dropping below the threshold for national representation (though saving two constituency seats).

As I recall, it's also the fact that Norway allots representation based on area as well as population or something along those lines? I should caution that I might be thinking of the first of their election victories and not the most recent one.

And while it's true that the opposition might not have been able to form a coalition government there would likely have been a non-Social Democrat government with tacit support from Fremskrittspartiet.

[Gustaf]

I checked it now. In 2005 the centre-right got 48.9% of the votes and 82 seats. The Red-Greens received 48% of the vote and 87 seats.

For instance, the Social Democrats received 61 seats for 32.7% of the votes while the two big right-wing parties also got 61 seats with a combined 36.2% of the vote.

So, it was (I believe) the fact that (as I also checked) Norwegian constituencies receive representation based on geographical size as well as on population.

[Gustaf]

EDIT: and in 2009 they actually were beaten by an even larger margin but then Venstre narrowly missed out, as you said.

[minionofmidas]

Norway's system regarding constituencies's seat numbers is a work of genius, really. If your goal is presenting a clear constituency link and somewhat overrepresenting remote rural locales (done in a lot of countries, remember, more usually using some random cutoff) without distorting party strengths too badly, not much can be done to improve it.
Constituencies are allotted a number of seats based on their population and area (basically, a square kilometer is treated as a person). But the number of seats filled based on constituency results is one fewer than the total number of seats in the constituency; the remaining seats are distributed nationally as equalization seats (with a threshold), then reattributed to the parties' constituency lists based on priority. The last few individual MPs will be elected somewhat at random. As a result, thinly-populated areas are overrepresented without also overrepresenting their parties of choice.
Evidently, as in every system (that is not Hare; IIRC Norway uses Ste Lague) that distributes seats by constituencies rather than nationally, large parties are somewhat overrepresented; and there really is only one large party in Norway. Hoyre and Fremskritt are about large enough to not be underrepresented, that's it. And there aren't quite enough equalization mandates around to fix that; you could improve the system in that respect. But the effect is not huge; only very marginally larger than in Sweden. Incidentally, the more parties narrowly cross the threshold, the worse the effect is going to be as they'll all be depending on equalization seats.

But yeah, when elections are routinely close, every little bit of systemic distortion is a problem. And that does seem to be the case in Norway at the moment.

Now, back to topic. Fremskritt and the children.