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For this article, I've decided to take a look at upcoming elections in other countries!
There are three countries with Parliamentary elections in October and November that will likely be of interest to leftists in Britain:
- Portugal (6th October), where centre-left Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa is seeking to win a majority for his Socialist minority government
- Canada (21st October), where Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is seeking to win a second term, and the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP) are seeking to rebuild their support after a disappointing 2015 election
- Spain (10th November), where centre-left Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is seeking to win a majority for his Socialist minority government
Portugal (6th October)
Following the 2015 election in Portugal, a minority coalition government composed of the conservative Social Democratic Party and CDS-People’s Party was formed. But after this government failed to win a motion of No Confidence, centre-left PM Antonio Costa took power instead.
Costa, leader of the Socialist Party (PS), has reversed austerity, halted planned privatisations and raised the minimum wage. The PS minority government has been supported in Parliament by two smaller leftist parties – the Left Bloc (BE) and the Unitary Democratic Coalition (CDU). In October, the electorate will get the chance to decide if they want to keep their anti-austerity PS government.
As well as the two previously mentioned conservative parties, the environmentalist People-Animals-Nature party (PAN) and the newly-founded conservative Alliance party (A) will also be seeking to win seats. In 2015, the PSD and CDS-PP stood together in an electoral alliance called “Portugal Ahead”; of the 107 MPs they won, 89 were members of the PSD and 18 were members of the CDS-PP. This alliance is not being repeated in October.
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| Monthly poll averages for Portugal's 2019 general election. |
The table above shows monthly average of Portuguese opinion polls in 2019 thus far. As only 1 poll was conducted in August, no average is provided for August. The Socialist Party (PS) has a clear lead (13pts in September thus far), with the Left Bloc (BE) and CDU unchanged from their 2015 result. PAN is doing well, polling 4% in September, up from the 1.4% they achieved in the 2015 election.
The conservative parties are doing poorly, however. The PSD and CDS-PP, having won a combined 39% of the vote in 2015, have lost a great deal of support. The PSD is now averaging just 25% in polls, with the CDS-PP averaging just 5%. Alliance, meanwhile, after averaging around 2-3% earlier this year, has dropped to just 1% in polls and looks unlikely to win any seats.
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| Monthly seat estimates based on monthly poll averages for Portugal's 2019 general election. |
The table above shows seat estimates based on those poll averages. 116 seats are needed for a majority. If current polling was repeated in an election, the PS would fall 6 seats short of an overall majority, winning 110 seats (+24). The Left Bloc would win 20 seats (+1), their best result ever, whilst the CDU would win 16 seats (-1), the same as in 2011. The PSD would win just 74 seats (-15), the party’s lowest share of seats (32.2%) since 1983, whilst the CDS-PP would collapse to just 6 seats, their worst result since 1991.
Portugal uses a system of proportional representation to elect its MPs. There are 20 constituencies, with varying numbers of MPs (ranging from 47 for Lisbon to 2 for Portalegre). In addition to this, there are 2 seats elected by Portuguese citizens living elsewhere in Europe and 2 seats elected by Portuguese citizens living elsewhere in the world. Each constituency allocates its seats through the D’hondt calculation, which broadly allocates seats in proportion to a party’s share of the vote.
As the PSD and CDS-PP stood as a single alliance in 2015, but are not doing so in 2019, I have calculated an estimate of what each party's vote share might have been in each constituency if they had stood seperately. This estimate is based on the three constituencies where they did stand against each other in 2015. In these seats, the PSD won an average of 88.2% of the combined PSD/CDS-PP vote, and the CDS-PP won an average of 11.8%.
My estimated 2015 vote share for the PSD in each constituency is thus 88.2% of the votes won by Portugal Ahead in that same constituency, and the estimated 2015 vote share for the CDS-PP is 11.8% of the votes won by Portugal Ahead. This is not ideal, but I think that it is the best that I can do.
Canada (21st October)
Since 2015, Canada has been governed by a Liberal Party majority government, led by centrist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau’s victory in 2015 was a remarkable achievement for the Liberals, given that in 2011 the party had dropped to third place (behind the centre-left New Democratic Party). In 2015, Trudeau increased the Liberals’ vote share by 20.6pts and gained 148 seats. In 2019, the party will be seeking to keep their majority.
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| Monthly poll averages for the 2019 Canadian general election. |
The table above shows poll averages in Canada since the start of 2019. The Conservatives currently have a 1pt over the Liberals, with the centre-left New Democratic Party (NDP) in third place and the centrist Green Party in fourth place. The Bloc Quebecois, who support independence for Quebec, are in fifth.
So what would that mean in terms of seats? Canada, like the UK, uses “First Past The Post” to elect their 338 MPs. As a result, my Canada seat estimate uses the same methodology as my UK seat estimate: applying the gain/loss for each party to that party’s vote share in every seat.
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| Monthly seat estimates based on monthly poll averages for the 2019 Canadian general election. |
As you can see, the Liberals’ share of seats has declined since the start of the year, and Canada looks set to elect its first Hung Parliament since 2008. This is not, however, particularly unusual for Canada; of the 23 Canadian elections held from 1945 to 2015, a total of ten (43%) resulted in hung parliaments. For comparison, of the 19 UK elections held from 1945 to 2015, just two (10%) resulted in hung parliaments.
Spain (10th November)
Since June 2018, Spain has been run by a minority Socialist government led by centre-left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Like Costa in Portugal, Sanchez came to power following a vote of No Confidence in the governing conservative party (the People's Party in Spain). But unlike Costa, Sanchez’s position in Parliament was very fragile. When he became PM, Sanchez’s party (the PSOE) only held 84 seats out of 350 (24%); this would be equivalent to Labour trying to form a government with just 156 MPs.
When Sanchez's budget failed in early 2019, he called a snap election, which was held in April 2019. Although the PSOE won the most votes and seats in that election (gaining 2.1m votes and 38 seats), they fell 53 seats short of a majority and have been unable to form a workable coalition, leading to the November snap election. This is the first time since 1872 that two Spanish general elections have been held in the same year.
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| Monthly poll averages for the November 2019 Spanish general election. |
The table above shows monthly poll averages since the April 2019 election. As you can see, the PSOE and People’s Party have made gains at the expense of the smaller parties; the PP in particular, which was nearly outpolled by the centrist Citizens (C’s) party in April, is now averaging 20% (+3pts).
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| Monthly seat estimates for Spain's election based on monthly average of polls. |
However, the PSOE’s hopes for a majority do not look set to be fulfilled. If current polling was repeated in an election, the PSOE and the left-wing Unidos Podemos (UP) would have a combined 167 seats – nine seats short of the 176 seats needed for a majority. In order to form a centre-left government, Sanchez would also need the support of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), a left-wing party that supports independence for the region of Catalonia. No other viable government could be formed. This is a change from May 2019, where the polls indicated that the PSOE (144 seats) and Podemos (36 seats) could have formed a governing coalition if an election was held in that month.
Summary
So, in summary:
- The Socialist minority government in Portugal is almost certainly going to win again;
- The Canadian Liberals are tied with the Conservatives, whilst the centre-left NDP is set to lose seats and achieve its worst result since 2004;
- The polls are getting worse for the Socialist minority government in Spain, and another inconclusive result looks set to be the outcome of Spain's third snap election in three years.
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