Looking forward to 2012 politically

Continuing the blog re-launch and switching to my other obsession. After looking back on 2011 cinematically, let's look forward to 2012 politically.

Truth be told, with the exception of the forthcoming City of Edinburgh Council elections (of which more later) the more interesting and meaningful elections this year are probably happening in other parts of the world, so I'm unapologetic about a slightly international flavour to this post, starting across the pond.

US Presidential Election
The year long roadshow has already started with the first Republican caucus in Iowa on Tuesday. Theoretically, Obama should be facing a tough re-election bid with the US economy struggling in the mire and relatively low approval ratings for the president himself. Of course, that would be dependant on the Republicans having a credible candidate and there is the nub of the matter.

Already retired from the race is Michelle Bachman - a rabid Tea-party-er (think Sarah Palin without any redeeming features). The winner in Iowa, Mitt Romney, won by a massive 0.01% of the total vote (hardly a ringing endorsement). He's probably the most moderate of the bunch with the possibility to appeal to the centre ground, but he's also a mormon and that ain't going to sit well with the Party's evangelical bible-belt base who could just sit at home were he the candidate, giving Obama crucial Mid-West swing states.

The man he narrowly beat, Rick Santorum, is much more on the right with some pretty hard-line views on things like homosexuality, abortion, etc... so much so that some naughty satirists came up with a new meaning for the word Santorum just to offend him (although I'd advise you not to google it). Like most of the other candidates, might galvanise the base but lose the rest of the country. Also still in the race are Ron Paul (a bit of a maverick with some allegations of racism in a publication he was responsible hanging over his head) and Newt Gingrich who's just pretty objectionable and Rick Perry.

Any of these could yet win the candidature (but are unlikely to win the presidency), or we could head into the Republican party convention with it all undecided (what is known as a brokered convention) in which case an as-yet-undeclared candidate may emerge from the floor - Jeb Bush is being mentioned. Whatever, I would expect Obama to be re-elected fairly comfortable although not with the landslide of 2008.

French Presidential Elections.
Another electorate facing a pretty poor choice this year are the French. Their presidential election (over two rounds) seems almost inevitably to come down to a choice between Sarkozy and socialist candidate Francois Hollande. Hollande is maintaining a healthy (but slightly shrinking lead) in the polls and the conventional wisdom is that Sarkozy is a goner. This would fit - across Europe almost every government that was in power when the financial crisis hit has been voted out at the first opportunity. The problem is that nobody (maybe not even Hollande himself) sees him as a president. He's more of a nearly man, who's been around for a long time without ever really achieving high office or anything spectacular. This might come into play more as the campaign progresses and I wouldn't be surprised to see Sarkozy pull back and maybe even pull of the big shock and win.

Of the other contenders, it seemed at one point last year that Front National leader Marine Le Pen might challenge Sarkozy for a place in the second round, but she seems to be fading away a bit. Centrist Francois Bayrou seems to enjoying something of a bounce and might catch Le Pen for third, but that's about his limit, whilst Left Front (Communist) Melanchon, Green Joly and fromer Sarkozy ally Villepin remain stuck in single figures.

London Mayor/Assembly
If the French feel like they have an all-too-familar choice, spare a thought for Londoners, where all three main parties have selected the same candidates for mayor as last time. The Deja-vu will probably continue with the same result - Boris re-elected as Livingstone fails to win back any of the votes he lost last time. In the Assembly there will also probably not be much change - maybe a seat or two changing between Labour and Tories, the LDs will try to hold all their seats whilst the Greens will try to gain an extra one and, hopefully, the BNP will be wiped out of the Assembly (in reality they are no longer there as their AM defected to the English Democrats) but it will be nice to see them defeated in an election.

Local Elections
Most local elections in England will be for seats last elected in 2008, which was Labour's nadir in terms of results, so expect some significant gains for them, especially in the Metropolitan areas. I'd expect the LDs to have reached their nadir last year and to maybe hold a few more seats this time round relatively. The Tories were boosted by the anti-AV vote last May and will probably do slightly, but not significantly worse this time.
In Wales, Labour will make significant advances.

The most interesting contests will be in Scotland where the SNP will be trying to carry on from their phenomenal success last year in local council elections. They could take control of some of Scotland's biggest councils - my prediction they will get a majority in Dundee and become the largest party in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, whilst narrowly missing out on doing the same in Glasgow (although preventing Labour keeping their majority). At the other end of the scale, the question for the LDs is just how bad will it be?

The Best Argument Against Proportional Representation???

Many of you may not recognise the woman opposite - she's Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie and leader of France's far-right Le Front National (in other words you could see her as a blonde Nick Griffin, but that's probably not a particularly pleasant mental picture). She's also been doing rather well in the polls recently - at least well in terms of getting votes, but not seats.

The last two weekends in March saw the Cantonal elections in France for about 2000 seats. The French system works rather differently - over two rounds of voting on successive weekends. After the first round:
- If any candidate gets over 50% of the vote, they are elected without a second round
- Any candidate securing votes of over 12.5% of those registered to vote (NB not those who actually vote) proceeds to the second round
- If less than two candidates meet this requirement, the top two automatically proceed to the second round.

Le Front National polled over 20% in the first round nationally, winning them places in about 400 second round contests. In the second round, they polled almost 12% (at an average of over 30% for each candidate they actually had standing). And how many seats did they win - just 2. That's right - 2 or roughly 0.1% of seats. By contrast the Greens managed to double their first round vote to about 8%, but ultimately won 27 seats. Under a proportional system, Le Front National would have won 300-400 seats probably.

Now, in reality i don't think that keeping any party (however obnoxious they are) out of power should be the deciding factor in choosing an electoral system (something that neither campaign in the upcoming referendum seem to agree with me about - both seem to be arguing that a vote for the other gives the BNP more power), but it is food for thought. And with Ms Le Pen currently polling around the same levels as M Sarkozy and the leading socialist contenders, it looks likely that she might make quite a splash in next year's presidential elections.

Elsewhere in Europe (using a proportional system) there was better news for Greens. Two German state elections also at the end of March saw them increase their number of seats in Baden-Wurttemberg from 17 to 36 and in Rhineland Palatinate from 0 to 18.

Meanwhile, closer to home, our own  nasty far-right seems to be struggling somewhat - it looks like the BNP will fielding well under half the number of candidates in this year's English local elections as they did in the last equivalent elections.