How Canadian Party Coalitions Have Evolved (Or, Why We Are Still in the Fourth Party System)

(Initially written December 2022; updated in October 2023 with newer graphics.) More than two years ago, I wondered whether the Liberals were doomed to continue losing ground because of the West's faster population growth, and I did a bit of preliminary graphing to see how they have fared in each province since the 1960s. Now …

In the Netherlands, a changing of the whole guard

The Dutch coalition government collapsed last month after just two years in office, leading to early elections that will be held in November. Mark Rutte, the longest-serving Prime Minister in Dutch history and the second-most senior EU head of government, has announced he would retire from politics. Many other major parties, including Labour (PvdA), Christian …

Canada’s Provincial Politics: Underhill, Revisited

I am following up on this recent analysis on the history of the federal party system by diving into the history of provincial politics. To begin, here is a diagram of all the provincial governments since Confederation and their partisanships, as well as (in the narrower bars below) the main party of opposition: Governments of …

Recent election results in the GTA

In the aftermath of the federal Liberals' crushing victory in Mississauga—Lakeshore, a riding that provincial Liberals had lost just 6 months before, I mapped out the victors in the various GTA ridings, both federally (left) and provincially (right), for the current and previous sets of riding boundaries. Here I included the Guelph—Kitchener-Waterloo—Cambridge triangle in "GTA" …

The False Promise of “Fixing” American Politics

For about six years now I've been contemplating the perfect, comprehensive piece that would lay out how America's institutions are ruining its politics and how a new set of institutions would save it. (Contemplating, mind you; not actually writing.) American citizens are currently focusing on zero-sum issues and forced to choose between suboptimal options, and …

Pendulums, rotations, and traffic lights: Recent events in party politics

1. The Pendulum Swings Left European Council members in mid-2018 (Macron had not yet affiliated with the Liberals). European Council members are usually heads of government, but sometimes head of state. European Council members today. Annoyingly, the shade of blue is different In my early days of writing about European politics, the seemingly inexorable decline …

[Japan, Take 2] The beginnings of something new and durable

I wrote my initial reactions to last week's upper-house election here. After a few days, my habitual optimism took over from the initial despair, and here I lay out that optimistic case. The populist meme parties had good election nights, and of course so did the LDP. But it wasn't just them. Ishin took close …

[Japan, Take 1] Nothing matters, and nothing will ever change

Following former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's assassination, there was a wide assumption that the LDP would win "sympathy votes" for last Sunday's Senate half-election, much in the way that Prime Minister's Ōhira's sudden death during the 1980 election campaign resulted in a boost for the governing party at the ballot box. And yet: LDP is …

[Work in Progress] Graphing the polls for Israel’s elections

GitHub code here It was supposed to be a quick project to get polling averages for Israel's multiple recent elections, but after getting bogged down in unsolvable problems, I remain far away from a graphic I'm satisfied with, so I figured I'd at least get a blog post out of it. The product I've got …

I Genuinely Couldn’t Care Less About the Upcoming Japanese Elections

The recent elections here in Ontario ended in frustration for progressives — the opposition ended up perfectly divided between the Liberals and NDP, while turnout cratered to 43%, a sign that the electorate was not positively inspired by any opposition party, nor negatively motivated by government shortcomings. My social circles have reacted harshly, bemoaning the …