Today’s elections

Since I focused all my attention on the European Parliament election, I’ve missed a few other elections. I thought it would be good to mention a few interesting elections that are taking place today:

• Iran’s voters are almost finished going to the polls to elect their President. The race has turned into a fierce contest between hardline supporters of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and reformists led by Mir Hossein Mousavi. It has been really hard to provide sensible psephological analysis of the election, so I won’t try, but a good source of  information is the Guardian liveblog.
• Voters are going to the polls in Auckland to elect a new Member of Parliament in Helen Clark’s old seat of Mount Albert. Although electorate seats help determine the number of list seats each party wins, a change in party holding Mount Albert would result in Labour losing one of their seats. The National Party has largely given up on the race, and recent polls suggest Labour is on track for about 60%  of the vote. The interesting element is in the campaign for Green Party co-leader Russel Norman, who is a sitting list MP. He won’t win, but it would be a strong result for the Green Party and their new leadership team of Norman and Metiria Turei if they manage to overtake the National Party candidate.

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