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- Das Böse ist immer und überall
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- he/him
The first in a series, most likely.
Helsingborg (Hälsingborg) 1954
Helsingborg (Hälsingborg) 1954
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Max's election maps and assorted others
- Thread starter Ares96
- Start date
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- Das Böse ist immer und überall
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- he/him
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
Remember the Tokyo subway map? It's back, in Yamanote form.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
England's administrative structure as of circa 1830 - in case anyone thinks France and the HRE had a monopoly on weird boundaries.
Black lines - county boundaries
Darkest grey - highest-level county subdivisions (ridings in Yorkshire, Parts in Lincolnshire, the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire, the Lathes of Kent and the Rapes of Sussex)
Medium grey - boundary of hundreds or equivalent units (wapentakes in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, wards in Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland and Westmoreland)
Lightest grey - boundary of sub-hundred units where available (divisions in most counties, parishes in Lancashire)
Lightest colouring - hundreds or equivalent
Medium colouring - liberties (basically special areas where the local landlord had jurisdiction instead of the quarter sessions)
Darkest colouring - boroughs
Red - counties corporate (boroughs administratively separate from their counties, most of which also had their own lords-lieutenants and sheriffs)
Now, a couple of big, fat asterisks should go with this. I've based it on whatever maps Wikimedia Commons has of the relevant county's ancient subdivisions, some of which are full dated maps with boroughs as well as hundreds, and others not. So for about half of this map, I don't know what the boroughs were or if the hundreds are actually accurate for circa 1830. I do know they're not in Wales, which is the fattest asterisk of them all - the map I've based it on shows hundreds/cantrefs during the Tudor era, just after the counties were established. It also doesn't show any boroughs, so I've based those off Wikipedia's list, which I suspect isn't quite exhaustive. For one, I doubt a majority of Welsh boroughs were in Ceredigion.
Black lines - county boundaries
Darkest grey - highest-level county subdivisions (ridings in Yorkshire, Parts in Lincolnshire, the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire, the Lathes of Kent and the Rapes of Sussex)
Medium grey - boundary of hundreds or equivalent units (wapentakes in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, wards in Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland and Westmoreland)
Lightest grey - boundary of sub-hundred units where available (divisions in most counties, parishes in Lancashire)
Lightest colouring - hundreds or equivalent
Medium colouring - liberties (basically special areas where the local landlord had jurisdiction instead of the quarter sessions)
Darkest colouring - boroughs
Red - counties corporate (boroughs administratively separate from their counties, most of which also had their own lords-lieutenants and sheriffs)
Now, a couple of big, fat asterisks should go with this. I've based it on whatever maps Wikimedia Commons has of the relevant county's ancient subdivisions, some of which are full dated maps with boroughs as well as hundreds, and others not. So for about half of this map, I don't know what the boroughs were or if the hundreds are actually accurate for circa 1830. I do know they're not in Wales, which is the fattest asterisk of them all - the map I've based it on shows hundreds/cantrefs during the Tudor era, just after the counties were established. It also doesn't show any boroughs, so I've based those off Wikipedia's list, which I suspect isn't quite exhaustive. For one, I doubt a majority of Welsh boroughs were in Ceredigion.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
Some BC stuff, then.
In 1969, W. A. C. Bennett had been Premier of British Columbia for seventeen years, leading a Social Credit Party that, unlike its cousin over in Alberta, had arguably never really been about Social Credit. Bennett was a fairly generic middle-of-the-road developmentalist conservative populist type, who disdained ideology and governed in the interest of making the people (including himself) richer. He was supported in this by most of the rural interior, which liked him because he was one of them and kept money flowing inland through provincial Crown corporations like BC Rail and BC Hydro. Especially strong Socred regions included the Okanagan, Bennett's home region, the Peace River Country in the far north, whose development was Bennett's pet project, and the Fraser Valley, then as now dominated by conservative evangelical churches. But the real key to Social Credit's standing in government was its support from the middle classes of Vancouver, who feared an NDP government and were prepared to vote for whoever provided the strongest alternative.
Bennett would grow more and more erratic after his seventieth birthday (he was born in 1900), and the younger generation clamoured for change just as they did in all the other English-speaking countries around the same time. For the 1972 election, Senior Social Credit figures made it a tacit campaign promise that their leader would resign after the election, which as campaign tactics go is never a great look. The people were fed up, and gave the NDP a majority government for the first time in the province's history.
The NDP hadn't actually come close to a majority of the popular vote - the old Socred vote actually went to the PCs, which ended up with fuck-all to show for it. When a snap election was called in 1975, those voters went back to Social Credit, now led by Bennett's son Bill Bennett. The younger Bennett was a fairly classic Red Tory type, with few of his father's eccentricities, and the Socreds received campaign advice from the "Big Blue Machine" of the Ontario PCs. The old winning formula was back.
Four years of Bennett the Younger proved successful enough that Social Credit were returned with a slightly reduced majority in 1979, and the Liberals and PCs each lost their sole remaining seat.
Bennett's government would come into some controversy during the early 1980s recession, in response to which it launched a massive austerity programme, cutting services and sacking government employees, which was unpopular enough to spark a general strike in spring 1983. The teachers' unions were particularly opposed, in keeping with the fine BC tradition of conservative provincial governments coming into conflict with teachers' unions. Still, though, the strikes were not enough to topple the Bennett government, which retained its broad popularity and was reelected that June with an increased majority.
Bill Bennett retired from politics in 1986, after eleven years as Premier. His replacement was Bill Vander Zalm, a Dutch immigrant who had first come to notoriety as the right-wing, slightly authoritarian Mayor of Surrey in the early 1970s. Vander Zalm had served under Bennett as Human Resources Minister, in which role he became infamous as an anti-welfare-fraud hardliner, and he was generally known to be more of a confrontational right-wing politician than Bennett. Still, his election marked a fresh start in the eyes of many, and he capitalised on this by immediately calling a snap election, winning a large majority on an outdated electoral map that had been "updated" by adding second seats in many larger ridings.
Vander Zalm's four and a half years as Premier were... strange. He was a deeply religious Dutch Calvinist in a province that was mostly irreligious, a small businessman with private business dealings who also held high political power, and a man who liked to surround himself with friends and allies even at the expense of his own party room. There was a constant air of low-level scandal around the Vander Zalm government, and moderate middle-class Social Credit voters began to desert the party on a scale not seen since the 70s. Vander Zalm would be forced out of office in April 1991 due to a corruption scandal, but the ensuing leadership election was won by Deputy Premier Rita Johnston, who was seen as a continuity candidate and, in any case, had no time to do anything to change that image before the parliamentary term ran out. The resulting election saw the Social Credit Party crushed, being reduced to its three old strongholds, and in their place the BC Liberals arose as the party of the middle class opposing the new NDP government.
In 1969, W. A. C. Bennett had been Premier of British Columbia for seventeen years, leading a Social Credit Party that, unlike its cousin over in Alberta, had arguably never really been about Social Credit. Bennett was a fairly generic middle-of-the-road developmentalist conservative populist type, who disdained ideology and governed in the interest of making the people (including himself) richer. He was supported in this by most of the rural interior, which liked him because he was one of them and kept money flowing inland through provincial Crown corporations like BC Rail and BC Hydro. Especially strong Socred regions included the Okanagan, Bennett's home region, the Peace River Country in the far north, whose development was Bennett's pet project, and the Fraser Valley, then as now dominated by conservative evangelical churches. But the real key to Social Credit's standing in government was its support from the middle classes of Vancouver, who feared an NDP government and were prepared to vote for whoever provided the strongest alternative.
Bennett would grow more and more erratic after his seventieth birthday (he was born in 1900), and the younger generation clamoured for change just as they did in all the other English-speaking countries around the same time. For the 1972 election, Senior Social Credit figures made it a tacit campaign promise that their leader would resign after the election, which as campaign tactics go is never a great look. The people were fed up, and gave the NDP a majority government for the first time in the province's history.
The NDP hadn't actually come close to a majority of the popular vote - the old Socred vote actually went to the PCs, which ended up with fuck-all to show for it. When a snap election was called in 1975, those voters went back to Social Credit, now led by Bennett's son Bill Bennett. The younger Bennett was a fairly classic Red Tory type, with few of his father's eccentricities, and the Socreds received campaign advice from the "Big Blue Machine" of the Ontario PCs. The old winning formula was back.
Four years of Bennett the Younger proved successful enough that Social Credit were returned with a slightly reduced majority in 1979, and the Liberals and PCs each lost their sole remaining seat.
Bennett's government would come into some controversy during the early 1980s recession, in response to which it launched a massive austerity programme, cutting services and sacking government employees, which was unpopular enough to spark a general strike in spring 1983. The teachers' unions were particularly opposed, in keeping with the fine BC tradition of conservative provincial governments coming into conflict with teachers' unions. Still, though, the strikes were not enough to topple the Bennett government, which retained its broad popularity and was reelected that June with an increased majority.
Bill Bennett retired from politics in 1986, after eleven years as Premier. His replacement was Bill Vander Zalm, a Dutch immigrant who had first come to notoriety as the right-wing, slightly authoritarian Mayor of Surrey in the early 1970s. Vander Zalm had served under Bennett as Human Resources Minister, in which role he became infamous as an anti-welfare-fraud hardliner, and he was generally known to be more of a confrontational right-wing politician than Bennett. Still, his election marked a fresh start in the eyes of many, and he capitalised on this by immediately calling a snap election, winning a large majority on an outdated electoral map that had been "updated" by adding second seats in many larger ridings.
Vander Zalm's four and a half years as Premier were... strange. He was a deeply religious Dutch Calvinist in a province that was mostly irreligious, a small businessman with private business dealings who also held high political power, and a man who liked to surround himself with friends and allies even at the expense of his own party room. There was a constant air of low-level scandal around the Vander Zalm government, and moderate middle-class Social Credit voters began to desert the party on a scale not seen since the 70s. Vander Zalm would be forced out of office in April 1991 due to a corruption scandal, but the ensuing leadership election was won by Deputy Premier Rita Johnston, who was seen as a continuity candidate and, in any case, had no time to do anything to change that image before the parliamentary term ran out. The resulting election saw the Social Credit Party crushed, being reduced to its three old strongholds, and in their place the BC Liberals arose as the party of the middle class opposing the new NDP government.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
I never want to hear of Baffin Island ever again.
Canada 1980
Canada 1980
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
While clearing out the SSD, I found an unfinished map of Hamburg that I honestly think might be some of my finest work:
I have absolutely no memory of why I made this, but the metadata says I did it in 2013.
I have absolutely no memory of why I made this, but the metadata says I did it in 2013.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
And it's done.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
Sydney (state elections) 1973, 1976, 1978
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
Helsingborg and Malmö, 1966
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- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
If the first Wranslide was won in Sydney, the second one was the result of Neville Wran's popularity extending through the rest of the state. In 1981, the Liberals pretty much stood their ground in Sydney, losing North Shore to an independent and a significantly redrawn Bligh to Labor but winning back Willoughby, while regaining some of their old majorities in those seats that had held in 1978. However, only one (1) Liberal in regional NSW would hold his seat (Joe Schipp in Wagga Wagga). The Liberals and NCP each ended up with fourteen seats each, totalling less than a third of the chamber.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
There don't seem to be any results available anywhere for the 1920 elections, so with that in mind, here are the three other Austrian interwar elections.
In 1923, a fairly dull election campaign saw the incumbent Bürgerblock government under Ignaz Seipel retain power - the German-National bloc lost a lot of votes, but because the CS fell one seat short of an absolute majority, the coalition was the only stable option.
The remaining four years were, um, about as quiet as it's possible for interwar Central Europe to get, and in 1927, the governing parties decided to stand for re-election as a unified list (Einheitsliste) - this was probably a tactical error, as the unified list barely improved on the CS result in 1923. The Landbund made big strides as a result, but did not succeed in depriving the unified list of a majority in the chamber. The SDAP made slight improvements on their 1923 result, and it looked for all the world like polarisation was setting in.
The Bürgerblock government fell in autumn 1930, when the CS nominated a Chancellor who was unpalatable to the German National side, and the succeeding CS minority government called fresh elections. By this point, the stable equilibrium was being undermined by the growth of paramilitary radicalism. The Heimwehr, a loose organisation of ex-military men who originally formed to combat Slovene interests in southeastern Carinthia during the referendum there in 1920, had been on the rise ever since, and the first big clashes between them and the SDAP-supported Republikanischer Schutzbund ensued in 1927 after a group of Heimwehr men were acquitted of murdering a child during a demonstration. In May 1930, Heimwehr groups from around the country had gathered in Korneuburg, north of Vienna, and sworn what became known as the Korneuburg Oath, proclaiming support for "renewing Austria from the ground up" and opposition to both Marxism and German nationalism. From this point on, the formerly loose-knit Heimwehr became one of Austria's strongest political movements. When the government fell and the National Council was dissolved, they very hastily threw together an electoral organisation dubbed the Heimatblock ("Homeland Bloc"), and put up the eccentric nobleman and former Nazi Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg as their candidate for Chancellor.
The Heimatblock would only get around six percent of the vote, becoming the smallest party in the new chamber, but their entrance emboldened sympathetic elements within the CS and discredited the more pro-democratic elements in the government. In 1931, the Creditanstalt, Austria's oldest and largest bank, declared bankruptcy, and the bailout proposed by Chancellor Ender brought down the government once more. A brief CS minority was followed by the installation of Engelbert Dollfuß, former Agriculture Minister and known corporatist, at the head of a CS-GDVP-HB coalition. In March 1933, a heated debate in the National Council resulted in all three speakers resigning - Dollfuß, never a man to look a gift horse in the mouth, declared the chamber "self-eliminated", and sent in the police to occupy the parliament building and prevent them from assembling again. Soon after, the governing parties were merged into the Vaterländische Front (Patriotic Front - usually rendered as "Fatherland Front" in English) and all others - most prominently the SDAP - were banned. The forcible disarmament of the Schutzbund resulted in four days of armed struggle during February 1934, which is generally known in German as the Februarkämpfe (February Struggles) and in English as the Austrian Civil War, and ended with the total defeat of the Schutzbund.
Now in complete control of the country, Dollfuß proclaimed a new constitution abolishing liberal democracy, and ruled as the fascist dictator of Austria for two months before getting shot. His assassins were not left-wingers, but rather Austrian Nazis (we hate Austrian Nazis) who thought this would be a great time to insert themselves into all of this. The assassination was followed by a general coup attempt, which was foiled by Dollfuß' successor as Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, who would go on to rule the "Austrofascist" state for four years before the Nazis totally overpowered him and forced Austria's annexation into Germany in March 1938.
In 1923, a fairly dull election campaign saw the incumbent Bürgerblock government under Ignaz Seipel retain power - the German-National bloc lost a lot of votes, but because the CS fell one seat short of an absolute majority, the coalition was the only stable option.
The remaining four years were, um, about as quiet as it's possible for interwar Central Europe to get, and in 1927, the governing parties decided to stand for re-election as a unified list (Einheitsliste) - this was probably a tactical error, as the unified list barely improved on the CS result in 1923. The Landbund made big strides as a result, but did not succeed in depriving the unified list of a majority in the chamber. The SDAP made slight improvements on their 1923 result, and it looked for all the world like polarisation was setting in.
The Bürgerblock government fell in autumn 1930, when the CS nominated a Chancellor who was unpalatable to the German National side, and the succeeding CS minority government called fresh elections. By this point, the stable equilibrium was being undermined by the growth of paramilitary radicalism. The Heimwehr, a loose organisation of ex-military men who originally formed to combat Slovene interests in southeastern Carinthia during the referendum there in 1920, had been on the rise ever since, and the first big clashes between them and the SDAP-supported Republikanischer Schutzbund ensued in 1927 after a group of Heimwehr men were acquitted of murdering a child during a demonstration. In May 1930, Heimwehr groups from around the country had gathered in Korneuburg, north of Vienna, and sworn what became known as the Korneuburg Oath, proclaiming support for "renewing Austria from the ground up" and opposition to both Marxism and German nationalism. From this point on, the formerly loose-knit Heimwehr became one of Austria's strongest political movements. When the government fell and the National Council was dissolved, they very hastily threw together an electoral organisation dubbed the Heimatblock ("Homeland Bloc"), and put up the eccentric nobleman and former Nazi Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg as their candidate for Chancellor.
The Heimatblock would only get around six percent of the vote, becoming the smallest party in the new chamber, but their entrance emboldened sympathetic elements within the CS and discredited the more pro-democratic elements in the government. In 1931, the Creditanstalt, Austria's oldest and largest bank, declared bankruptcy, and the bailout proposed by Chancellor Ender brought down the government once more. A brief CS minority was followed by the installation of Engelbert Dollfuß, former Agriculture Minister and known corporatist, at the head of a CS-GDVP-HB coalition. In March 1933, a heated debate in the National Council resulted in all three speakers resigning - Dollfuß, never a man to look a gift horse in the mouth, declared the chamber "self-eliminated", and sent in the police to occupy the parliament building and prevent them from assembling again. Soon after, the governing parties were merged into the Vaterländische Front (Patriotic Front - usually rendered as "Fatherland Front" in English) and all others - most prominently the SDAP - were banned. The forcible disarmament of the Schutzbund resulted in four days of armed struggle during February 1934, which is generally known in German as the Februarkämpfe (February Struggles) and in English as the Austrian Civil War, and ended with the total defeat of the Schutzbund.
Now in complete control of the country, Dollfuß proclaimed a new constitution abolishing liberal democracy, and ruled as the fascist dictator of Austria for two months before getting shot. His assassins were not left-wingers, but rather Austrian Nazis (we hate Austrian Nazis) who thought this would be a great time to insert themselves into all of this. The assassination was followed by a general coup attempt, which was foiled by Dollfuß' successor as Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, who would go on to rule the "Austrofascist" state for four years before the Nazis totally overpowered him and forced Austria's annexation into Germany in March 1938.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
One of the things this new basemap lets me do is map elections at the regional level without having to resort to insets (well, outside of Stockholm anyway). So, I've done that, as far up as the base currently goes.
Regional councils in Sweden are technically a fairly new thing, but of course there have been county councils (landsting) in place since the reforms of the 1860s, very likely modelled on the French general councils. These were originally local consultative bodies elected by weighted census suffrage and mostly relevant because they elected the First Chamber of the Riksdag, but over time they came to be given significant power over two specific areas: public transport and healthcare. Because of this very specific orientation, the county councils came to be seen as a nice sinecure for older politicians to move to when their careers in the actually significant parts of government were on the wane. Partly because of that, and partly because of the increased need to coordinate policy at a level above municipal, in 1998 the new county councils in Skåne and Västra Götaland, as well as the unitary authority on Gotland, were given special planning powers normally reserved for the central government and rebadged as "regions". The first Löfven cabinet appointed a royal commission to investigate implementing the regional system across the country, planning to merge the 21 counties then in existence into around half that number of regions (I forget if it was nine or ten now), but this went over about as well as things like that usually go over, so instead of implementing its recommendations they decided on a compromise solution of transforming the existing county councils into regions.
The way regional councils (and county councils before them) are elected is kind of a hybrid between the Riksdag election system and the municipal election system - there's semi-open list PR, with a threshold lower than that for the Riksdag, and the council itself decides whether or not to subdivide itself into constituencies for the regional elections. This last part is quite new, constituencies used to be required, but the parties (especially the smaller parties) tended to ignore them and stand the same list across the county, so maybe it made sense to let them skip the pretence. The threshold is 2% if there's no constituency subdivision and 3% if there is, and for councils with constituencies, a tenth of the total seats are reserved as levelling seats. Oh, and resident non-citizens get to vote just like they do for the municipal councils.
Aside from that, the big thing that marks the regions out from other levels of government is the presence of sjukvårdspartier, or "healthcare parties" in English. This is a phenomenon that somewhat resembles a cross between the Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern and the Free Voters in Germany - basically, local lists usually headed by actual health professionals, who support "common-sense politics" and typically call for both increased public healthcare funding and a freer policy toward private options. They first arose in the 90s, and back then they tended to have more fun names than they do now, but there was a quixotic effort to pull a national list together for the 2006 Riksdag election that resulted in a lot of the groups adopting a common identity and pooling their campaign resources across county lines. Today, they're especially strong in the north - the Norrbotten branch, the oldest and most prominent one, actually beat the Social Democrats into first place in 2018 - but their results tend to depend more on specific local issues (like whether or not there's a hospital threatened with closure) than geographic or social factors. Northern Sweden is, of course, basically defined by its size and sparse population, so it does stand to reason that local health provision is just harder there than everywhere else.
Regional councils in Sweden are technically a fairly new thing, but of course there have been county councils (landsting) in place since the reforms of the 1860s, very likely modelled on the French general councils. These were originally local consultative bodies elected by weighted census suffrage and mostly relevant because they elected the First Chamber of the Riksdag, but over time they came to be given significant power over two specific areas: public transport and healthcare. Because of this very specific orientation, the county councils came to be seen as a nice sinecure for older politicians to move to when their careers in the actually significant parts of government were on the wane. Partly because of that, and partly because of the increased need to coordinate policy at a level above municipal, in 1998 the new county councils in Skåne and Västra Götaland, as well as the unitary authority on Gotland, were given special planning powers normally reserved for the central government and rebadged as "regions". The first Löfven cabinet appointed a royal commission to investigate implementing the regional system across the country, planning to merge the 21 counties then in existence into around half that number of regions (I forget if it was nine or ten now), but this went over about as well as things like that usually go over, so instead of implementing its recommendations they decided on a compromise solution of transforming the existing county councils into regions.
The way regional councils (and county councils before them) are elected is kind of a hybrid between the Riksdag election system and the municipal election system - there's semi-open list PR, with a threshold lower than that for the Riksdag, and the council itself decides whether or not to subdivide itself into constituencies for the regional elections. This last part is quite new, constituencies used to be required, but the parties (especially the smaller parties) tended to ignore them and stand the same list across the county, so maybe it made sense to let them skip the pretence. The threshold is 2% if there's no constituency subdivision and 3% if there is, and for councils with constituencies, a tenth of the total seats are reserved as levelling seats. Oh, and resident non-citizens get to vote just like they do for the municipal councils.
Aside from that, the big thing that marks the regions out from other levels of government is the presence of sjukvårdspartier, or "healthcare parties" in English. This is a phenomenon that somewhat resembles a cross between the Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern and the Free Voters in Germany - basically, local lists usually headed by actual health professionals, who support "common-sense politics" and typically call for both increased public healthcare funding and a freer policy toward private options. They first arose in the 90s, and back then they tended to have more fun names than they do now, but there was a quixotic effort to pull a national list together for the 2006 Riksdag election that resulted in a lot of the groups adopting a common identity and pooling their campaign resources across county lines. Today, they're especially strong in the north - the Norrbotten branch, the oldest and most prominent one, actually beat the Social Democrats into first place in 2018 - but their results tend to depend more on specific local issues (like whether or not there's a hospital threatened with closure) than geographic or social factors. Northern Sweden is, of course, basically defined by its size and sparse population, so it does stand to reason that local health provision is just harder there than everywhere else.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
Trying out a new representation diagram scheme, which I'm hoping will show majorities better than the little mans - it's essentially based on the "Westminster-style" scheme I use for Australian/Canadian/NZ/Indian etc. elections, but slightly adapted to fit how a Swedish council actually (typically) sits.
The 1966 local elections were the last held on a separate day from the general elections, and probably the most politically significant in history. At least in popular memory, they were largely fought on a single issue - the housing crisis. Prime Minister Erlander, who would celebrate twenty years continuously in office about a month after polling day, would coin the phrase förväntningarnas tyranni ("the tyranny of expectations") in his memoirs to describe the 1960s, as the economy grew at ever-higher rates and demands for reform and development outpaced the capacity of the governing party to deliver on them. This was especially true of the big cities, which had been growing at a breakneck pace ever since the war, and where the amount of available housing was nowhere near keeping pace with this growth.
Erlander was also caught off-guard by a new innovation during the local election campaign - SR announced that its round of interviews with the party leaders would, for the first time, be conducted by the same journalists for all the leaders. Previously, political interviews in radio and television had usually been done by a figure personally selected by the politician, and questions had been pre-approved and answers prepared in advance - about the same way you'd conduct an interview with a member of the royal family. In 1966, a new course would be followed, pioneered by the three journalists who became known as the "Three Os" (Lars Orup, Åke Ortmark and Gustaf Olivecrona). This would feature aggressive, unprepared questioning and pressing for answers even (especially) where the politician was clearly uncomfortable with a topic. Erlander's interview is particularly well-remembered, as the Three Os grilled him over the housing crisis, asking what his advice was to a young couple who wanted to move to Stockholm but couldn't get a home there. His best response: "well, they'd have to sign up to the housing queue, of course" - never mind that the waiting list was months if not years.
The Social Democrats went into 1966 defending a very good position - in 1962, they'd secured an absolute majority of voters nationwide - but the lacklustre 1966 campaign drove a lot of people away from the party. In the end, their vote would total 43 percent, and they'd lose control of more than half the county councils, most notably getting completely buried in Stockholm (both the city and county, though the city can't be seen on this map). It was a result that led to a lot of hope on the right, which would continue to fail to come together over the next few years, and a lot of soul-searching on the left. Not long after the election, the government would announce a plan to have a million new homes built by 1975, a massive increase by any measure. In the 1968 general election, Erlander's last as party leader, he led a resurgent campaign that saw the Social Democrats regain their absolute majority in the Second Chamber - the First Chamber was secure despite the losses in 1966. The 1966 campaign also convinced the Social Democrats that they were disfavoured by the system of separate polling days, which depressed turnout and thus helped the right (bear in mind that 1966 turnout had been 83.1% whereas the 1964 general election had seen 83.3% turnout, so the differential is hardly massive), and so the constitutional reform that created the unicameral Riksdag would also move general election dates to coincide with local elections starting in 1970.
View attachment val-lt-1966.png
The 1966 local elections were the last held on a separate day from the general elections, and probably the most politically significant in history. At least in popular memory, they were largely fought on a single issue - the housing crisis. Prime Minister Erlander, who would celebrate twenty years continuously in office about a month after polling day, would coin the phrase förväntningarnas tyranni ("the tyranny of expectations") in his memoirs to describe the 1960s, as the economy grew at ever-higher rates and demands for reform and development outpaced the capacity of the governing party to deliver on them. This was especially true of the big cities, which had been growing at a breakneck pace ever since the war, and where the amount of available housing was nowhere near keeping pace with this growth.
Erlander was also caught off-guard by a new innovation during the local election campaign - SR announced that its round of interviews with the party leaders would, for the first time, be conducted by the same journalists for all the leaders. Previously, political interviews in radio and television had usually been done by a figure personally selected by the politician, and questions had been pre-approved and answers prepared in advance - about the same way you'd conduct an interview with a member of the royal family. In 1966, a new course would be followed, pioneered by the three journalists who became known as the "Three Os" (Lars Orup, Åke Ortmark and Gustaf Olivecrona). This would feature aggressive, unprepared questioning and pressing for answers even (especially) where the politician was clearly uncomfortable with a topic. Erlander's interview is particularly well-remembered, as the Three Os grilled him over the housing crisis, asking what his advice was to a young couple who wanted to move to Stockholm but couldn't get a home there. His best response: "well, they'd have to sign up to the housing queue, of course" - never mind that the waiting list was months if not years.
The Social Democrats went into 1966 defending a very good position - in 1962, they'd secured an absolute majority of voters nationwide - but the lacklustre 1966 campaign drove a lot of people away from the party. In the end, their vote would total 43 percent, and they'd lose control of more than half the county councils, most notably getting completely buried in Stockholm (both the city and county, though the city can't be seen on this map). It was a result that led to a lot of hope on the right, which would continue to fail to come together over the next few years, and a lot of soul-searching on the left. Not long after the election, the government would announce a plan to have a million new homes built by 1975, a massive increase by any measure. In the 1968 general election, Erlander's last as party leader, he led a resurgent campaign that saw the Social Democrats regain their absolute majority in the Second Chamber - the First Chamber was secure despite the losses in 1966. The 1966 campaign also convinced the Social Democrats that they were disfavoured by the system of separate polling days, which depressed turnout and thus helped the right (bear in mind that 1966 turnout had been 83.1% whereas the 1964 general election had seen 83.3% turnout, so the differential is hardly massive), and so the constitutional reform that created the unicameral Riksdag would also move general election dates to coincide with local elections starting in 1970.
View attachment val-lt-1966.png
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
Here's the extremely dull Colorado House election, which saw the Democrats pick up a seat in suburban Denver while the Republicans gained one of the Pueblo seats, making zero net change and leaving the House at 41-24 Democratic, same as in 2018. Of course, this is still pretty stunning for a body that had a permanent Republican majority until Bush II, so think of it as consolidating CO's status as a safe blue state rather than a pure "no change" election.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
I was working on some old congressional elections, but I decided to move over to a country that makes more sense.
Indonesia is the world's fourth-largest country by population, and will very likely become the third-largest within a few decades. The majority of its population live on the island of Java, whose 140 million inhabitants cram themselves onto an island the size of England (not Great Britain, England). The tropical climate and strong, predictable monsoons make Java extremely fertile ground for rice cultivation, which is the island's main agricultural staple and the reason it supports such a massive population. Java is culturally divided between its eastern two-thirds, whose inhabitants speak Javanese, and its western third, whose inhabitants speak Sundanese. Both groups use Indonesian as a lingua franca, and both groups are overwhelmingly Muslim, falling along a spectrum between the more syncretic traditional practices of the abangan and the more orthodox "modernist" Islam of the santri. Jakarta additionally has well-established Chinese and Malay communities, and Christianity has a lingering presence from colonial times but doesn't quite dominate any part of Java the way it does some of the outlying Indonesian islands.
The politics of Java reflect its ethnic and cultural divides, with the Sundanese-speaking regions traditionally divided between moderate Islamists and right-wing secular nationalists, while the rural Javanese-speaking central region was the main stronghold of the Indonesian Communist Party until its dissolution and mass murder at the hands of the Army in the 1960s. The eastern end of the island, which is divided between Javanese and Madurese (an ethnic group originating on the neighbouring island of Madura), is known as a stronghold of the Nahdlatul Ulama movement, a moderate santri Islamic movement whose members (mostly) support a tolerant, pluralistic ideal of Islamic culture.
How does this translate to the electoral map, then? Well, Indonesia has gone through some things over its seventy-five years of independence, and of the countries I've mapped thus far, it probably most closely resembles Brazil - it's a young democracy whose party system mostly lives in the shadow of the former military dictatorship. In Indonesia, this was the New Order (Orde Baru) of President Suharto, who ruled from 1967 until 1998. Suharto took a pretty dim view of democracy in general, but he did allow closely-managed legislative elections between three state-sanctioned political parties - the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP), a holding pen for Islamists, the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI), which started out as a holding pen for secular nationalists but became dominated by the centre-left brand of such favoured by former president Sukarno and his daughter Megawati, and the Functional Groups (Golongan Karya, Golkar), a "non-party" composed of different social corporations who held a majority in the legislature throughout Suharto's rule, and had no proper ideology beyond vaguely-authoritarian capitalist developmentalism - the "functional group" that controlled the organisation in practice was the military.
After the 1997 Asian financial crisis brought down Suharto's government, free elections were held in 1999, and these featured a number of new parties in addition to the main three (Megawati rechristened the PDI as the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, PDI-P), but the PPP and Golkar carry on under their old names):
- The National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, PKB) was established by NU leader Abdurrahman Wahid (also known as "Gus Dur"), and is essentially the political vehicle for the NU in about the same way as the Komeito in Japan is for Soka Gakkai. As such, they support a moderate "Islamic democracy", wanting a bigger role for Islam in Indonesian society and politics but stopping short of calling for an Islamic republic. Wahid was elected President by the legislature in 1999, but had to resign in 2001 after a corruption scandal, being replaced by Megawati, who had served as his vice-president.
- The National Mandate Party (Partai Amanat Nasional, PAN) is also a moderate Islamist party, but is supported by the Muhammadiyah organisation rather than NU and draws more support off Java.
- The Justice and Prosperity Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS) subscribes to a more radical form of Islamism, inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and while it doesn't outright support a Sharia-based Islamic republic, it's usually considered the most hardline of Indonesia's Islamist parties.
- The Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat) entered the scene in 2004 as the vehicle for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's candidacy in the first direct presidential elections in Indonesian history, in which Yudhoyono defeated Megawati convincingly. During his ten-year presidency, it became something of a party of power, replacing Golkar's authoritarian corporatism with neoliberal secular nationalism.
- The NasDem Party (Partai NasDem) is a political vehicle for media mogul Surya Paloh, who had previously been a Golkar member, and as you might expect from all these factors, it has no real ideology beyond vague secular nationalism. With Yudhoyono leaving office in 2014, there's now very little to distinguish NasDem from the Democrats (or, indeed, Golkar) in practice.
- Finally, the Party of the Great Indonesia Movement (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya, Gerindra) is a political vehicle for General Prabowo Subianto, Suharto's former son-in-law and one of the principal movers-and-shakers in the late New Order's military support organisation. Prabowo formed a united front with Megawati to oppose Yudhoyono's re-election efforts in 2009, but after this failed spectacularly, Prabowo and the PDI-P fell out and Gerindra became one of the two principal players in presidential politics. Prabowo ran for president in 2014 and 2019, losing both times to the PDI-P's Joko Widodo.
In 2019, the legislature was elected on the same day as the President for the first time ever, and Jokowi cruised to re-election against Prabowo backed by all parties except Gerindra, the Democrats, the PAN and the PKS. The PDI-P made significant gains and defended its first-place status from 2014, helped by a strong showing in Javanese-speaking central and east Java, especially so around Jokowi's home region of Surakarta. Prabowo's popularity in west Java reflected itself in good results for Gerindra there, while the PKB did well in the NU strongholds in the east. The PAN and PKS took most of the Islamic vote in west Java, the PKS in particular getting first-place results in Bandung and suburban Jakarta.
Indonesia is the world's fourth-largest country by population, and will very likely become the third-largest within a few decades. The majority of its population live on the island of Java, whose 140 million inhabitants cram themselves onto an island the size of England (not Great Britain, England). The tropical climate and strong, predictable monsoons make Java extremely fertile ground for rice cultivation, which is the island's main agricultural staple and the reason it supports such a massive population. Java is culturally divided between its eastern two-thirds, whose inhabitants speak Javanese, and its western third, whose inhabitants speak Sundanese. Both groups use Indonesian as a lingua franca, and both groups are overwhelmingly Muslim, falling along a spectrum between the more syncretic traditional practices of the abangan and the more orthodox "modernist" Islam of the santri. Jakarta additionally has well-established Chinese and Malay communities, and Christianity has a lingering presence from colonial times but doesn't quite dominate any part of Java the way it does some of the outlying Indonesian islands.
The politics of Java reflect its ethnic and cultural divides, with the Sundanese-speaking regions traditionally divided between moderate Islamists and right-wing secular nationalists, while the rural Javanese-speaking central region was the main stronghold of the Indonesian Communist Party until its dissolution and mass murder at the hands of the Army in the 1960s. The eastern end of the island, which is divided between Javanese and Madurese (an ethnic group originating on the neighbouring island of Madura), is known as a stronghold of the Nahdlatul Ulama movement, a moderate santri Islamic movement whose members (mostly) support a tolerant, pluralistic ideal of Islamic culture.
How does this translate to the electoral map, then? Well, Indonesia has gone through some things over its seventy-five years of independence, and of the countries I've mapped thus far, it probably most closely resembles Brazil - it's a young democracy whose party system mostly lives in the shadow of the former military dictatorship. In Indonesia, this was the New Order (Orde Baru) of President Suharto, who ruled from 1967 until 1998. Suharto took a pretty dim view of democracy in general, but he did allow closely-managed legislative elections between three state-sanctioned political parties - the United Development Party (Partai Persatuan Pembangunan, PPP), a holding pen for Islamists, the Indonesian Democratic Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia, PDI), which started out as a holding pen for secular nationalists but became dominated by the centre-left brand of such favoured by former president Sukarno and his daughter Megawati, and the Functional Groups (Golongan Karya, Golkar), a "non-party" composed of different social corporations who held a majority in the legislature throughout Suharto's rule, and had no proper ideology beyond vaguely-authoritarian capitalist developmentalism - the "functional group" that controlled the organisation in practice was the military.
After the 1997 Asian financial crisis brought down Suharto's government, free elections were held in 1999, and these featured a number of new parties in addition to the main three (Megawati rechristened the PDI as the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan, PDI-P), but the PPP and Golkar carry on under their old names):
- The National Awakening Party (Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, PKB) was established by NU leader Abdurrahman Wahid (also known as "Gus Dur"), and is essentially the political vehicle for the NU in about the same way as the Komeito in Japan is for Soka Gakkai. As such, they support a moderate "Islamic democracy", wanting a bigger role for Islam in Indonesian society and politics but stopping short of calling for an Islamic republic. Wahid was elected President by the legislature in 1999, but had to resign in 2001 after a corruption scandal, being replaced by Megawati, who had served as his vice-president.
- The National Mandate Party (Partai Amanat Nasional, PAN) is also a moderate Islamist party, but is supported by the Muhammadiyah organisation rather than NU and draws more support off Java.
- The Justice and Prosperity Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS) subscribes to a more radical form of Islamism, inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and while it doesn't outright support a Sharia-based Islamic republic, it's usually considered the most hardline of Indonesia's Islamist parties.
- The Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat) entered the scene in 2004 as the vehicle for Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's candidacy in the first direct presidential elections in Indonesian history, in which Yudhoyono defeated Megawati convincingly. During his ten-year presidency, it became something of a party of power, replacing Golkar's authoritarian corporatism with neoliberal secular nationalism.
- The NasDem Party (Partai NasDem) is a political vehicle for media mogul Surya Paloh, who had previously been a Golkar member, and as you might expect from all these factors, it has no real ideology beyond vague secular nationalism. With Yudhoyono leaving office in 2014, there's now very little to distinguish NasDem from the Democrats (or, indeed, Golkar) in practice.
- Finally, the Party of the Great Indonesia Movement (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya, Gerindra) is a political vehicle for General Prabowo Subianto, Suharto's former son-in-law and one of the principal movers-and-shakers in the late New Order's military support organisation. Prabowo formed a united front with Megawati to oppose Yudhoyono's re-election efforts in 2009, but after this failed spectacularly, Prabowo and the PDI-P fell out and Gerindra became one of the two principal players in presidential politics. Prabowo ran for president in 2014 and 2019, losing both times to the PDI-P's Joko Widodo.
In 2019, the legislature was elected on the same day as the President for the first time ever, and Jokowi cruised to re-election against Prabowo backed by all parties except Gerindra, the Democrats, the PAN and the PKS. The PDI-P made significant gains and defended its first-place status from 2014, helped by a strong showing in Javanese-speaking central and east Java, especially so around Jokowi's home region of Surakarta. Prabowo's popularity in west Java reflected itself in good results for Gerindra there, while the PKB did well in the NU strongholds in the east. The PAN and PKS took most of the Islamic vote in west Java, the PKS in particular getting first-place results in Bandung and suburban Jakarta.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
The 1955 DPR (People's Representative Council) election was the only proper legislative election held during Sukarno's twenty years as President, and had been preceded by five years of back-and-forth wrangling between the different factions that made up the appointed Provisional DPR. The Provisional Constitution of 1950 envisioned a parliamentary system with a legislature elected by the people in free, secret and direct elections, tempered by the presidential power to dissolve the DPR and call early elections if the machinery of government failed. Every cabinet since then had been formally committed to holding these free elections, but bickering over the details as well as the general instability of the Indonesian government meant it took until spring 1953 for the Provisional DPR to pass an electoral law. This was a relatively progressive document giving the vote to all Indonesians aged 18 or higher and establishing a proportional electoral system with one representative in the DPR for every 150,000 inhabitants in a province. There was some concern that pure representation by population would give Java too much power vis-a-vis the rest of the country, but this was nonetheless the law that was adopted, and preparations were carried out slowly and methodically over 1954 before finally holding the vote on 29 September 1955.
The hope was that an elected DPR would have a mandate to produce a stable, effective democratic government, but this would not come to pass. In large part, this was because of the incredible social divisions within the country, which was after all based on the borders of the Dutch East Indies (though still without West Papua) and included wildly different nationalities and religious groups. President Sukarno had formulated an official state ideology called the Pancasila (from the Sanskrit for "five principles") based on patriotism, altruistic internationalism, consensus-based democracy, social welfare and monotheism (comparisons with the Six Arrows of Kemalism are both apt and welcome), which he hoped would be able to serve as a unifying force to bring all these disparate people together. The party founded by Sukarno, the Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), was naturally the most pro-Pancasila organisation, but most non-Islamic parties signed up to it to some degree. The PNI also combined it with something they called "Marhaenism", after a Sundanese peasant named Marhaen whom Sukarno had met in the 1930s, who had a small plot of land that fed his family but still suffered from economic exploitation and scarcity of modern farming tools. Sukarno formed Marhaenism as an ideology that would free the "Marhaens" of Indonesia to live dignified lives, mixing elements of Marxism, economic nationalism and anti-imperialism.
The other most powerful force in Indonesian politics was political Islam, whose principal organisation was a political coalition dubbed the Assembly of Indonesian Muslim Associations (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia, Masyumi), originally set up during the war as an Islamic support organisation for the Japanese occupation, but who carried on into the post-war era to bring Islamic principles into the political life of independent Indonesia. The Masyumi were the biggest party in the Provisional DPR, and they had ruled in a grand coalition with the PNI until 1953, at which point a PNI-led coalition took over. The electoral campaign would be dominated by mutual sniping between the two, with the Masyumi accusing the PNI of opposing Islamic principles and the PNI accusing the Masyumi of wanting to establish a sharia-based state.
But of course, there was a third bloc - the Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI). The Communists weren't really a thing outside of Java, but in Java they mounted a spirited campaign aimed less at securing voters for the election and more at securing sympathisers for the inevitable class struggle they foresaw after the election. The campaign had been carried out since 1949, and was proving successful beyond their wildest dreams, with the party reaching a million members shortly after the election. In the late 50s, the PKI would become the world's third-largest communist party, with only those of the Soviet Union and China boasting higher memberships. They were aided in their growth by their support for Sukarno's domestic policy, which they saw as a vastly preferable alternative to either foreign capitalist domination or the Masyumi's Islamist vision.
And then there were the Christians. Though Java, Sumatra and most of Borneo were solidly Muslim, missionaries during the Dutch period had been successful in evangelising the native populations on a lot of the smaller islands, particularly so in the east. Being the products of Dutch influence, these Christians were quite sharply divided between Protestants and Catholics, who had separate identities, social structures and political parties - the boringly-named Christian Party of Indonesia (Partai Kristen Indonesia, Parkindo) for the Protestants and the even more boringly-named Catholic Party (Partai Katolik) for the Catholics.
Beside these four blocs, three more parties represented in the Provisional DPR merit mention - the Indonesian Socialist Party (Partai Sosialis Indonesia, PSI), the Unity Party of Greater Indonesia (Partai Parsatuan Indonesia Raya, PIR), and the Common People's Conference (Musyawarah Rakyat Banyak, Murba). The PSI was a fairly generic social-democratic party which had been one of the big players in the independence struggle, but whose leadership now seemed stuck between the PKI and PNI with little room to stake out their own ideological path. The PIR was a right-wing splinter from the PNI that supported the Pancasila and the independence struggle but rejected Sukarno's more radical ideas. The Murba, finally, was one of those syncretic former resistants' parties, sort of a mix of the Italian Action Party and the Iranian Tudeh Party - their ideology mixed fierce nationalism with socialist economics, and they and the PKI continued to view one another as a mortal rival even as the PKI came to greatly outnumber the Murba.
Both the PSI and the PIR were significant blocs in the Provisional DPR, and both would be utterly mauled in the elections - the PSI only retained any kind of strength in Bali, and the PIR split into two factions which each won only a single seat, thus not even making it into the key of the map. The Murba also underperformed expectations, winning only two seats, and the Masyumi saw their hopes of becoming Indonesia's leading party dashed as the PNI came to exactly equal them in seat share. In large part, this was because of a factor no one had really reckoned with - the growth of the Nahdlatul Ulama, whom we've already discussed above, as a more cohesive Islamic organisation to challenge the Masyumi. The NU did particularly well in east Java, where they became the largest party, and also captured significant support across the rest of Java as well as Borneo.
The PKI, meanwhile, tripled its number of seats compared to the Provisional DPR, although it is worth noting that only four of their 39 seats came from off Java, all of those being Sumatran. Really, the only party to achieve a better result off Java than on it was the Masyumi, which was utterly dominant on Sumatra and generally did well among off-Java Muslims. The PNI did neither significantly better nor worse than expected, and although it became the largest party, the fact that the largest party got 22% of the vote was obviously not great for stability. All told, the new DPR would have 28 parties, 11 of which won at least four seats. If the goal of calling elections had been to secure a more effective parliamentary system, that was not likely to happen.
The Masyumi's Burhanuddin Harahap was able to put together a coalition with the NU, the Christian parties and the PSI - really, just about everyone except the PNI and PKI - which Sukarno assented to, but which fell as early as March 1956. The succeeding cabinets would all be led by the PNI, and the Masyumi and other Islamic groups became ever more disillusioned. In February 1958, a group of dissidents on Sumatra including Harahap went into rebellion, declaring themselves the "Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia". Sukarno's government sent in the army, newly outfitted with Soviet surplus materiel, and drove the rebels into the mountains by summer, though low-intensity fighting would carry on until 1961. By then, Sukarno had dismissed his last cabinet, declared himself Prime Minister as well as President, dissolved the DPR, restored the 1945 constitution (which gave the President significantly more power) and instituted what he called a system of "guided democracy" - essentially enlightened absolutism for the 20th century. Things would not get better from there on out.
The hope was that an elected DPR would have a mandate to produce a stable, effective democratic government, but this would not come to pass. In large part, this was because of the incredible social divisions within the country, which was after all based on the borders of the Dutch East Indies (though still without West Papua) and included wildly different nationalities and religious groups. President Sukarno had formulated an official state ideology called the Pancasila (from the Sanskrit for "five principles") based on patriotism, altruistic internationalism, consensus-based democracy, social welfare and monotheism (comparisons with the Six Arrows of Kemalism are both apt and welcome), which he hoped would be able to serve as a unifying force to bring all these disparate people together. The party founded by Sukarno, the Indonesian National Party (Partai Nasional Indonesia, PNI), was naturally the most pro-Pancasila organisation, but most non-Islamic parties signed up to it to some degree. The PNI also combined it with something they called "Marhaenism", after a Sundanese peasant named Marhaen whom Sukarno had met in the 1930s, who had a small plot of land that fed his family but still suffered from economic exploitation and scarcity of modern farming tools. Sukarno formed Marhaenism as an ideology that would free the "Marhaens" of Indonesia to live dignified lives, mixing elements of Marxism, economic nationalism and anti-imperialism.
The other most powerful force in Indonesian politics was political Islam, whose principal organisation was a political coalition dubbed the Assembly of Indonesian Muslim Associations (Majelis Syuro Muslimin Indonesia, Masyumi), originally set up during the war as an Islamic support organisation for the Japanese occupation, but who carried on into the post-war era to bring Islamic principles into the political life of independent Indonesia. The Masyumi were the biggest party in the Provisional DPR, and they had ruled in a grand coalition with the PNI until 1953, at which point a PNI-led coalition took over. The electoral campaign would be dominated by mutual sniping between the two, with the Masyumi accusing the PNI of opposing Islamic principles and the PNI accusing the Masyumi of wanting to establish a sharia-based state.
But of course, there was a third bloc - the Communist Party of Indonesia (Partai Komunis Indonesia, PKI). The Communists weren't really a thing outside of Java, but in Java they mounted a spirited campaign aimed less at securing voters for the election and more at securing sympathisers for the inevitable class struggle they foresaw after the election. The campaign had been carried out since 1949, and was proving successful beyond their wildest dreams, with the party reaching a million members shortly after the election. In the late 50s, the PKI would become the world's third-largest communist party, with only those of the Soviet Union and China boasting higher memberships. They were aided in their growth by their support for Sukarno's domestic policy, which they saw as a vastly preferable alternative to either foreign capitalist domination or the Masyumi's Islamist vision.
And then there were the Christians. Though Java, Sumatra and most of Borneo were solidly Muslim, missionaries during the Dutch period had been successful in evangelising the native populations on a lot of the smaller islands, particularly so in the east. Being the products of Dutch influence, these Christians were quite sharply divided between Protestants and Catholics, who had separate identities, social structures and political parties - the boringly-named Christian Party of Indonesia (Partai Kristen Indonesia, Parkindo) for the Protestants and the even more boringly-named Catholic Party (Partai Katolik) for the Catholics.
Beside these four blocs, three more parties represented in the Provisional DPR merit mention - the Indonesian Socialist Party (Partai Sosialis Indonesia, PSI), the Unity Party of Greater Indonesia (Partai Parsatuan Indonesia Raya, PIR), and the Common People's Conference (Musyawarah Rakyat Banyak, Murba). The PSI was a fairly generic social-democratic party which had been one of the big players in the independence struggle, but whose leadership now seemed stuck between the PKI and PNI with little room to stake out their own ideological path. The PIR was a right-wing splinter from the PNI that supported the Pancasila and the independence struggle but rejected Sukarno's more radical ideas. The Murba, finally, was one of those syncretic former resistants' parties, sort of a mix of the Italian Action Party and the Iranian Tudeh Party - their ideology mixed fierce nationalism with socialist economics, and they and the PKI continued to view one another as a mortal rival even as the PKI came to greatly outnumber the Murba.
Both the PSI and the PIR were significant blocs in the Provisional DPR, and both would be utterly mauled in the elections - the PSI only retained any kind of strength in Bali, and the PIR split into two factions which each won only a single seat, thus not even making it into the key of the map. The Murba also underperformed expectations, winning only two seats, and the Masyumi saw their hopes of becoming Indonesia's leading party dashed as the PNI came to exactly equal them in seat share. In large part, this was because of a factor no one had really reckoned with - the growth of the Nahdlatul Ulama, whom we've already discussed above, as a more cohesive Islamic organisation to challenge the Masyumi. The NU did particularly well in east Java, where they became the largest party, and also captured significant support across the rest of Java as well as Borneo.
The PKI, meanwhile, tripled its number of seats compared to the Provisional DPR, although it is worth noting that only four of their 39 seats came from off Java, all of those being Sumatran. Really, the only party to achieve a better result off Java than on it was the Masyumi, which was utterly dominant on Sumatra and generally did well among off-Java Muslims. The PNI did neither significantly better nor worse than expected, and although it became the largest party, the fact that the largest party got 22% of the vote was obviously not great for stability. All told, the new DPR would have 28 parties, 11 of which won at least four seats. If the goal of calling elections had been to secure a more effective parliamentary system, that was not likely to happen.
The Masyumi's Burhanuddin Harahap was able to put together a coalition with the NU, the Christian parties and the PSI - really, just about everyone except the PNI and PKI - which Sukarno assented to, but which fell as early as March 1956. The succeeding cabinets would all be led by the PNI, and the Masyumi and other Islamic groups became ever more disillusioned. In February 1958, a group of dissidents on Sumatra including Harahap went into rebellion, declaring themselves the "Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia". Sukarno's government sent in the army, newly outfitted with Soviet surplus materiel, and drove the rebels into the mountains by summer, though low-intensity fighting would carry on until 1961. By then, Sukarno had dismissed his last cabinet, declared himself Prime Minister as well as President, dissolved the DPR, restored the 1945 constitution (which gave the President significantly more power) and instituted what he called a system of "guided democracy" - essentially enlightened absolutism for the 20th century. Things would not get better from there on out.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
And here's the full 2019 map.
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
This overlaps quite a bit with another Election Twitter user's recent work, but I'm going to do it anyway. In 1965, France held its first direct presidential election in a hundred and twenty years. Charles de Gaulle, who had been elected by a whopping landslide in the college of grands-électeurs in 1958 and gone on to win two legislative elections by a convincing margin, expected to cruise to re-election in the first round, and so did most of his opponents. Pierre Mendès France, the de facto leader of the French left at this point, refused to legitimise the system of direct elections by participating in one, and Gaston Defferre was unable to secure the support of his party leadership. In the end, the task of opposing de Gaulle fell to Mendès France's interior minister, the centre-left independent François Mitterrand. Though a relatively obscure name going into the election, Mitterrand turned out to be a masterful campaigner, and was able to run de Gaulle down sufficiently to ensure a runoff would be held - de Gaulle received some 45% of the vote in the first round, with 32% going to Mitterrand, 15% to MRP leader Jean Lecanuet, 5% to the protest candidacy of OAS lawyer Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, and 3% to scattered independents.
Although de Gaulle had been complacent enough to end up in a runoff, his campaign was still able to marshal enough support to win easily, with the margin of victory staying more or less the same across the country between the two rounds. Still, the mere fact that the man who was the Fifth Republic couldn't get 50% of the electorate behind him indicated that maybe, just maybe, things were starting to change. The 1965 election marks the turning point from early de Gaulle to late de Gaulle, and the beginning of the regeneration of the French left that would culminate in May 1968 (not that Mitterrand or the established left-wing parties had anything to do with that, of course).
Although de Gaulle had been complacent enough to end up in a runoff, his campaign was still able to marshal enough support to win easily, with the margin of victory staying more or less the same across the country between the two rounds. Still, the mere fact that the man who was the Fifth Republic couldn't get 50% of the electorate behind him indicated that maybe, just maybe, things were starting to change. The 1965 election marks the turning point from early de Gaulle to late de Gaulle, and the beginning of the regeneration of the French left that would culminate in May 1968 (not that Mitterrand or the established left-wing parties had anything to do with that, of course).
- Location
- Das Böse ist immer und überall
- Pronouns
- he/him
A minor update to this, as I've found some descriptions of the 1960s inquiry into the administrative divisions of Norway. Turns out their plan was quite boring, it just involved merging the Agders and changing the boundary between the Trøndelags slightly, but there were some vague notes as to what might be needed in the future which I've worked off of. Still not sure if the Oslo region should be rearranged as well, but I think it works this way.
