The Tally Room

A few days ago the website RealClearWorld came out with a list of the five elections it considers the most significant of 2009. They are: Israel Iran Germany Japan Afghanistan Well worth a read.

Israel is one of the only countries in the world where its entire legislature is elected to represent the country as a whole, and it is often blamed for Israel's unstable and rapidly-changing party system. It is true that Israel's pure form of proportional...

After Nick Xenophon voted against the government's stimulus package this afternoon, I've heard at least one journalist claim that, if the bill is blocked again tomorrow the government will have its first double dissolution trigger. Sadly for all of us election junkies, that isn't...

I know, I know, I don't actually do "blog post of the week", but a post today from Possum at Pollytics is the funniest I've read in a while: The Qld Liberal/National Party recently released an economic document which you can see over here (the...

There's a lot of stories touting a supposed narrow victory for Tzipi Livni's Kadima in today's Israeli election, but this reflects a first-past-the-post mentality with little value in Israel's ultra-multi-party system. Rather than Livni coming out on top, it seems very likely that Benjamin...

So Israelis are now voting for their new Knesset. Polls close at 7am AEDT, and I hope to post an early results update at 9am followed by more detailed results at lunchtime. It appears that the gap between Netanyahu's Likud and Livni's Kadima has...

So the UK will see a general election either this year or next year, and the election will see a new set of boundaries being used in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while Scotland last had a redistribution before the 2005 election. I've started...

100th post! The Australian Electoral Commission has finalised the new electoral boundaries for the next federal election. You can download the Google Earth map here. The map includes the 2007 boundaries as well as the new boundaries. We have also seen a redistribution in the...

In today's Sydney Morning Herald, the surprisingly-large "upcoming elections in large Asian countries whose name begins with an I" has a couple of articles of interest for election junkies. In Indonesia, the Herald has reported that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is staring down a shadowy...

Former Liberal leader John Hewson penned a piece in today's Crikey speculating at the possibility of an early federal election later this year. He points out, reasonably enough, that the economic crisis will likely hit harder in 2010 and that the Emissions Trading Scheme...