DVSentinel
DP Veteran
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- Oct 20, 2011
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Other.
Berry and cheese or cherry.
Berry and cheese or cherry.
What's the possibility of Venstre and the Social Democrats working together to prevent the DPP from being apart of government?
Wrong. You can vote either for the party and then your vote goes to the person the party decides, usually the nr 1 on the list, till that person is voted and then it goes to the next one and so on. Or you vote personally, but setting an X by a candidates name and then your vote goes to that person.
In the Netherlands every party files a list of candidates with the election authority. The positions on the list are decided by the parties itself. For example, the party who won the last election will be list number 1, their party leader will be number 1 on that list and the rest of the candidates take the rest of the places on the list. Normally every party has so many prospective members that a good deal will not be elected because normally you can vote for each candidate. If that candidate has so many votes that she qualifies for a place in parliament, then someone else of the party will not be allowed in our version of the house of representatives.
Say party 1 has won 20 seats, then if no-one has enough preferential votes to win their seat outright, the party leader and the 19 people who are on the list on place 2 through 20 will have won a seat. But if say number 23 on the list is so popular that he/she has enough preferential votes to win a seat, then the last one on the list to normally get a seat will lose out because the party has a maximum of 20 seats to fill.
But if this party becomes part of the coalition government then 1 or more will become members of government, they will then no longer be part of the house of representatives because you cannot be both in government and a MP. So they will vacate their seats and say 8 MP's of that party will become part of the government, then their seats will be filled by the numbers 20 to 27 on their original list.
A lot of political parties have list-pushers, purely put on the list of electable figures to incite people to vote for them (like former party leaders, musicians, actors, writers, etc.) to push the vote for their party but those people will never win enough (and do not really want to be) sitting in parliament.
And every party constructs it's list of candidates in the same way.
That is how I though it worked, turns out it is much more convoluted.
So Rutte and the cabinet minsters are not MPs, the government is entirely separate? Does the government still physically sit in parliament?
I elect this danish:
But only because your damn system sounds complicated as hell.
I would've much rather preferred that it would've come down to the Faeroese separatists. An independent Faroe Islands would be a much better end to the election than the DPP being given a chance at prime minister.
With Helle Thorning-Schmidt stepping down as leader of the Social Democrats and Thulesen Dahl ruling out going into government at all, (probably so that they can keep their populist appeal) that leaves Rasmussen as the only viable candidate for PM, despite the fact that his party came in third in popular vote and in seats... what a mess.
I elect this danish:
But only because your damn system sounds complicated as hell.
No that is the Social Democrats. They might (god I hope not) become the biggest party on the right... still 49% of the votes to be counted and the gab is getting smaller.
Well lets see. I am ashamed of my country that so many people have voted for those nationalist racist pigs, but just because they become the largest party on the right does not mean that the people on the right will work with them. There is a lot of political angling going on tonight and tomorrow. Lets put it this way, no one on the left want the Peoples Party in government and the right side parties are not exactly thrilled either.
And the reality here is that many of the new votes going to the Peoples Party are more likely protest votes against the Ventres (The Liberal Party) leader and former Prime Minster. He is an ass, a drunk and frankly he and his cronies have ruined the party. We shall see.
So presumably an EU referendum would be a condition for any kind of coalition agreement? or is it not as much of a Sine Qua Non for them as it would be for UKIP?
It is not a mess, it is quite normal. Denmark has not had a majority government in decades as far as I remember.
Now before the election it was a given that Rasmussen was the leader of the opposition and the blue block. That Dahl happened to gain more seats (3 more) does not change that because lets be frank.. it is most likely a fluke. Chances are they will lose many of those gained seats next election as they usually do. The Peoples Party voters are not exactly the most loyal out there. Many of those votes are most likely protests votes against the Venstre leader himself, and I suspect that for the next election in 4 years, there might be a new leader of the party... at least I hope so.
Now Dahl does not want to be in government for a simple reason. The future elections. 2nd tier parties in Danish coalition governments tend to lose seats at the next election. The Socialist Peoples party went into coalition government after the 2011 election and lost a lot of votes due to it, despite leaving the coalition government over a year ago. Many voters returned to their roots in the Communist party or the new Alternative party (which frankly smells a lot like the Socialist Peoples party), which this election both became bigger than the Socialist Peoples party for the first time I believe. So if Dahl went into coalition with Rasmussen, then he would have to compromise a lot, which would piss off the base and make them flee to other parties.. most likely Venstre ironically.
No instead he could become the main backer of a Rasmussen lead minority government with only Venstre in government.. he has done it before. It will be weak, very weak, but its parliamentary basis will be the right wing blue block.
Other than that Rasmussen would have to negotiate with all parties on every piece of legislation, which is what most Danish governments have done for the last 30+ years. So it opens up a freedom for Rasmussen to say talk EU with everyone else but the communists and the Peoples Party but include them in say social legislation or financial legislation. It could easily be that next years budget could be Venstre, Conservatives, Social Democrats, Radical Liberals for example, totally excluding the Peoples party.. probably wont but it could.
So this is about as close to a true democracy you can get if you think about it. Parties negotiate across political divides on all issues to reach a compromise that can be accepted.
Oh I don't object to the idea of the need for negotiations in parliamentary politics. It just seems bizarre to me that Rasmussen will most likely be taking the position of PM and be the one conducting the negotiations instead of Thorning-Schmidt, since her party was in first and increased its share of the vote, which is not something that happened in the election that actually resulted in her becoming Prime Minister.
Meanwhile Venstre loses some of its share of the vote and falls from first to third, but will be tasked with forming government. It seems like who becomes PM is based heavily off of the blue bloc and the red bloc, which as you've explained, are definitely not absolute and parties seem to be willing to work with parties from other blocs. It doesn't really seem like the most democratic way to determine who becomes PM.
If DPP isn't going to take the responsibility of forming government, that seems like it could have good and bad results. Obviously it means that for now, Dahl won't become PM. But the appeal of the DPP is that it's an anti-establishment party, and if it's going to remain part of the anti-establishment, that gives it potential for even more growth. I really hope that its role as the largest right-wing party is temporary.
The Socialist People's Party really seems like it's in trouble at this point. Most European multi-party democracies have two parties to the left of their social democratic parties: a green party and a hard-left socialist party. I'm not really sure why, but you guys have never really had a successful green party, so the Socialist People's Party has sort of filled that role: an environmentalist party in between the center-left and the hard-left. Meanwhile the Red-Greens occupy hard-left socialism. Now that the Alternative has filled the role of a green party, I don't really see a niche for the SPP in the political system.
Just an update for those who are interested. A week after the election, the new government is about to be announced. It looks like it will be a minority Venstre led government under Løkke Rasmussen.
Venstre is the 3rd biggest party after the election and only the 2nd biggest on the right wing... they were basically the big losers at the ballot box. It looks like the right wing parties will back Rasmussen as Prime Minister but every piece of legislation will have to be negotiated with all parties.. which is basically what normally happens anyways. The big winner of the election, the Danish Peoples Party cant form a government because the other right wing parties wont back it. The Danish Peoples Party demands to be part of the government have also been crazy to say the least.. including banning the English language at universities, where some courses are done in English. They had quite a few crazy demands, so I suspect that they were poison pills instead. The other right wing parties also said from the start that they would not join a government but would back a right wing government run by Rasmussen.
Personally I think it is the best solution. The new government will be the weakest in 40+ years no doubt about that, but I also suspect that most legislation will continue to be done with the Social Democrats and not with the Danish Peoples Party.. which has been the normal way of doing things for decades. The left are in no state at the moment for new elections so I suspect that they also will back for now the new government. The Social Democrats need a new leader and the Socialist Peoples Party needs a lot of soul searching as well. The Red-Green alliance also has it internal problems after the election smacking they got.
We shall see, it is not final yet but looks more and more like it will be the above.
All in all, I don't whether or not to be disappointed. I don't really like any of the big three parties (although I certainly dislike DPP more than the other two).
What do you mean with the Red-Green comment? They had their best results in history, and IMO, their gains were one of the few bright spots of this election. Their collective leadership strategy does seem like it would get in the way of becoming a feasible party though.
Lots of people are disappointed with the DPP. I suspect they will flee the part at the next election because of this.
Well yea looking at the results.. dunno what I was thinking off. I dont like the party at all. They are just old school communists and their collective leadership is bull****. Had the election been in July, then they would have lost a lot of votes. One of their main people is a vote eater and she would not have been allowed to run for office any more due to an internal rule in the party.
Well I'm sure we could debate the merits of the Red-Greens all day. :mrgreen: I'm not sure if you mentioned it, I might've missed it somewhere else in the thread. Who did you vote for in the election?