Who'll be in power in the following countries in 2016?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

UK governments tend to do better in polls as election day approaches. I also think a lot of people here are looking at the job approval of Milliband compared to Cameron's.

I presume those are the reasons, yeah. Against that, we don't yet know how low the government parties will sink as they've only been in power for a year, while Miliband's ratings aren't noticeably worse than Cameron's (neither are good). But the reality is that it's impossible to tell, especially now that we have a government that is made up of two parties.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is far too recent and conjunctural to be called a trend.

Or too far back in the past to be called a trend. You could call it a long-term tendency, maybe. Which is quite different. And not at all predictive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You don't think that the Fourth Republic counts as 'modern times'?

Anyway, I don't think we actually disagree. It isn't that French voters have a long-standing preference for left-wing local government (especially given the control that central government had over local government until the 1980s) combined with right-wing central government, but that France is certainly not immune from standard mid-term voting patterns.