Parliament of Recommendations

[Estrella]

I counted each individual recommendation because more seats are more fun. The "new" legislature are the first six or so pages of my posting history, the "old" one (the one it's compared to) is the next six and a half.

Should also note that the descriptions are not based on actual posters at all, which kind of defies the point but whatever.

The Chamber of Representatives of the Republic of Estrellia
300 seats / 151 needed for a majority

People's Party — 130 (▼39) 43.3% (▼13.0)
hideously corrupt party of power, no ideology except Representing The Common People™, Protecting The Interests of Fatherland™ and looting the state coffers, impossible to find a person who doesn't have a sticker/t-shirt/tote/pen/mug/poster/flag/bath rug with their logo
Socialist Party — 72 (▲29) 24.0% (▲9.7)
hopeless high-energy "MASSACRE THE BOURGEOISE" permanent opposition party turned hopeless low-energy "more social spending pweeease" permanent opposition party, its base having shifted accordingly from factory workers to Chardonnay-drinking suburban moms
Centre Alliance — 43 (▲14) 14.3% (▲4.7)
our ideology is that we aren't PP or SP and that we want more fluffy bunnies (massive ammounts of fluffy bunnies for everyone, in fact), what we're best at is polling at 40% a year before the election only to get a pathetic result because our campaigns are run by idiots
Independent Reformist Union — 27 (▼5) 9.0% (▼1.7)
a cross-party alliance of experts to finally fix this country's probl- lol jk we're just a gang of old PP dinosaurs who got kicked out from the party because we were too corrupt even for them, also we offer this amazing service where if you vote for us the tires on your car won't get slashed
The Greens — 17 (▲2) 5.7% (▲0.7)
the party of urban bobo art students who hate SP for not talking enough about vegan school lunches and the plight of full-time copywriters, also we hate carbon but want to shut down all nuclear power plants because that somehow makes sense
Conservative Party — 4 (━ 0) 1.3% (━ 0.0)
the respectable middle class opposition party back when SP was still in its red-flags-and-general-strikes phase, led the only non-PP government in country's history whose record was so catastrophic that they've never won more than half a dozen seats since
The Nationalists — 2 (▲1) 0.7% (▲0.3)
haha the libs are such #triggered snowlakes but I'm scared of women in hijab
Libertarians — 1 (━ 0) 0.3% (━ 0.0)
founded by dropouts from Estrellia School of Economics
No affiliation — 4 (▼2) 1.3% (▼0.7)
a random fluoride conspiracy crank, an ex-Green kicked out for being a TERF, an ex-Green kicked out for not being a TERF, and the governor of a province with more llamas than people running on the platform that her province does indeed exist

Incumbent government: PP+IRU (157 seats) aka Morocco Coalition

[Estrella]

You know how writers sometimes say "oh it wasn't me, my character decided to do it so I had to write it?" I used to think that's bullsh/t, but Estrellian politics seems to have taken on a life of its own.

See my previous post for information about the parties.
The Chamber of Representatives of the Republic of Estrellia
300 seats / 151 needed for a majority



People's Party — 132 (▲2) 44.0% (▲0.7)
Socialist Party — 52 (▼20) 17.3% (▼6.7)
Centre Alliance — 42 (▼1) 14.0% (▼0.3)
Independent Reformist Union — 26 (▼1) 8.7% (▼0.3)
The Greens — 21 (▲4) 7.0% (▲1.3)
Conservative Party — 12 (▲8​) 4.0% (▲ 2.7)
Libertarians — 3 (▲2) 1.0% (▲0.7)
The Nationalists — 1 (▼1) 0.3% (▼0.4)
No affiliation — 11 (▲7) 3.7% (▲2.0)
After the last election, the PP-IRU government got off to a bad start right away when Estrellia Police initiated Operation Gombeen. Hundreds of politicians from both governing parties were arrested on charges of corruption big and small, ranging from a mayor buying traffic cones for $200 apiece from his sister's wife's (yay woke criminals!) company, to a cabinet minister embezzling all money from Fund To Make Sad Puppies Less Sad And More Happy And Also Do Other Nice Things Fund and blowing it on cocaine and hookers. When this storm blew over (though only after the largest wave of protests in Estrellia's history), things didn't get any better. The coalition kept going from scandal to scandal and from disaster to disaster, losing their majority and nearly falling apart multiple times. Unemployment and deficits soared thanks to economic mismanagement, Estrellia started multiple pointless diplomatic crises as an attempt to distract from the dumpster fire enveloping the country, the aforementioned record for largest protests in Estrellia's history was broken a couple more times, and it was a foregone conclusion that both PP and IRU would get a pasting come election...

...and then the pandemic arrived. In a government where ministers (and Prime Ministers!) changed almost daily, by a sheer stroke of luck the Ministry of Health managed to fall in the hands of someone with two brain cells to rub together. While the rest of the cabinet was busy trying to stay out of jail, the minister took charge of Estrellia's coronavirus response. He didn't exactly manage to do a New Zealand, but his handling of the pandemic was generally regarded as okay both by experts and Estrellians. When the Minister of Finance was forced to resign, he took over this post as well. His only notable action in this office was the one that would prove decisive in the next election: writing generous stimulus cheques to all citizens of Estrellia. The PP establishment very quickly realized that if the party wants to avoid electoral oblivion, they have no choice but to make The Guy Who Kept Us Safe From The Plague And Gave Everyone Free Money their leader. And so, just weeks before the election, he was made People's Party leader and Prime Minister.

Surprisingly given the rather eventful term of the outgoing government, the election produced little change:

For the People's Party, the result was mostly a sigh of relief; their disaster of a government (pre-pandemic, at least; at several points they were polling in single digits!) did not result in a significant drop in their vote - in fact, they gained two seats. But there are dark clouds on the horizon: the aforementioned scandals made them hated even in previously ambivalent parts of Estrellian society, and it's entirely possible that ~45% isn't the floor it used to be, but the ceiling.

The Socialist Party result, on the other hand, was a huge, huge disappointment. The party was the main beneficiary of PP's collapse in the polls and in midterm local elections, but as PP recovered, the Socialist wave came down as fast as it rose. They still expected to make at least some gains, though. A loss of almost 20 seats came as a shock and immediately prompted calls for resignations, and perhaps even drastic measures like renaming the party to something less scary than "Socialist" because that will obviously solve all of their structural problems.

The Centre Alliance, on the other hand, is relieved that they only lost one seat. They were unable to make their mark in opposition, and as the "Maroon Crush" swept the country, many of their voters jumped on the Socialist train. Even after it derailed, CA's leadership feared they'll switch to other parties, but ultimately enough returned for the party to get a decent result.

As for the IRU... oh, boy. You'd think that after having a majority of their caucus arrested for, among other things, masterminding the largest money laundering scheme in Estrellia's history, voters would finally kick them out of the Chamber (and ideally off a cliff), but no. The gangsters-in-chief tried to rebrand this criminal enterprise party yet again, this time into a hardcore anti-lockdown, anti-vaxxer, covid denialist group. This produced a split between 1) those who thought that they should stay a respectable front for the mafia and turning into conspiracy nutters is a step too far and 2) those whose said F/CK YEAH! Long story short - 1) joined the PP or became independent and 2) now has full control over the renewed party. This party then went on to win 26 seats because we live in a hellworld and Estrellian voters are morons.

The Greens suffered from much the same issue as Centre Alliance, but they actually managed to keep all their voters and gain some new ones. The Socialists chose to lead an uncharacteristically populist campaign and it seems that some of their middle class voters felt more comfortable voting for a party that focuses on incoherent screeching about environment and white male privilege rather than incoherent screeching about social security and brown furriners stealin arr jerbs.

Conservative Party was the winner of the night. While 12 seats is still a poor result by historical standards, they were helped by voters having pretty much forgotten the clown car crash that was the only Conservative-led government in the history of Estrellia. The key to (relative) success, though, was the decision to recruit a well-known Wessex People's Democratic Republic dissident to serve as party leader.

Libertarians seem to have become yet another refuge for anti-maskers because of course.

The Nationalists... lol.

Eleven unaffiliated candidates were elected. Unfortunately, all colourful personalities from last time round lost, and all eleven indies are products of the aforementioned split in IRU.
On election night, when it became clear that PP will be the largest party by far but will not win a majority, their leader suprised everyone by announcing that he will not seek to form a coalition, but will instead lead a minority government. An anti-PP coalition cannot be formed without support of the IRU, something which is obviously unacceptable to all concerned. It seems that PP will continue to be the natural governing party of Estrellia, at least for now...