I'm annoyed about reporting of the Belgian elections

[andrewducker]

I really wish that reporting of elections that used Proportional Representation didn't refer to the biggest party as having "won". It makes absolutely no sense to refer to a party which got 24 of 150 seats (16%) as having "won", and yet I've seen multiple headlines refer to Belgian's right-wing "New Flemish Alliance" as having won the election.

In fact, looking at the election results from Belgium, it's incredibly balanced:

Right	44
Centre Right	31
Centre	1
Centre Left	34
Left	31
Green	9

Which, if you lump in the Greens on the Left (which they are in Belgium) means that you have 75 on the Right, 74 on the Left, and 1 in the middle. Or 66 in the centre-ish, with their pick of other parties to form a coalition with.

I mean, sure, I'd rather that the deeply unpleasant far right party "Vlamms Belang" *hadn't* won 20 seats. But that still leaves 130 seats that they didn't get.

So when you see scare stories about "The Far Right Is Winning Elections In Europe!" - go and check *how much* of that election they actually won.

If you'd like some sensible coverage you can find it here

Comments

[kerk_hiraeth]

The link at the bottom isn't working.

And I haven't trusted the Beeb's political coverage since they started inviting the unelected UKIP onto political broadcasts but not the elected Greens and, even though I ~regretfully I now feel~ voted against Independence, they're coverage of Scottish politics has been less than fair.

I confess I've never been as depressed about an election as with this upcoming one :-(

kerk

[andrewducker]

Link hopefully fixed!

And yes, I don't feel hopeful about the upcoming election.

[bens_dad]

Sadly, UKIP often get more votes than the Greens.

We cannot demand electoral reform *and* complain that the Beeb prefers the populist to the elected.

:-(

[doug]

I've also seen people describe Belgium in this context as a Francophone country, which is sort-of true but really misunderstanding what's going on - the NVA and Vlaams Belang are very much not Francophones. Nor, indeed, is it wholly accurate to to use that word of the resigning PM, Alexander De Croo, although I understand he does speak fluent French.

[doug]

We were in Flanders week before last, as it happens, and **FIXME correctly predicted that the NVA would do well and Vlaams Belang wouldn't break through as feared.

[cmcmck]

When I lived in the country in the late seventies there seemed to be an election every few months for three years!

[andrewducker]

With European, Federal, Regional, and Local elections all taking place, I'm not surprised!

[redbird]

The latest issue of Jay Kuo's blog/newsletter The Status Kuo points out that voters generally are dissatisfied, and are blaming whoever is in power locally. Yes, right-wing parties gained votes in western Europe, but they lost votes to centrist parties in Eastern Europe, notably Hungary. In India, Modi's Hindu nationalist party did worse than they or the polls predicted, which may again be because people cared more about the economy and whether they had enough to eat than culture war issues.

Kuo also warns that some pundits are likely to treat right-wing gains in France as bad news for Biden and liberal democracy, while saying that a Tory loss in the upcoming UK election is unique to Britain. (Kuo doesn't claim to be non-partisan, and some of his newsletters talk about good strategy for the Democrats.)

[andrewducker]

That makes a lot of sense. I do think that people are sold one thing, and then when they don't get what they wanted, either because it was oversold, or other factors occur, they blame whoever is in power.

[pseudomonas]

The UK press habitually does this with countries that have a multi-party system that doesn't lend itself to that kind of analysis. It's all about what coalitions might or might not become viable as a result of the election; the largest party only gets the first crack at finding a coalition, they don't have any guarantee at all of being in the government (assuming that any kind of government actually results)