The Tally Room

Guest post from Ofir Thaler: In predicting the winners in Israeli elections, especially in the last 15 years, it is nowhere near enough to just look at the top of the list of parties and see how the large parties are faring against each other....

Only days ago, Jack Layton's NDP remained in a technical coalition with Michael Ignatieff's Liberals in Canada. Yet after the coalition was dissolved by Ignatieff supporting the Conservative budget, Layton has lashed out at the Liberals in a new round of radio ads: “Some things...

So Canada's conservative government has brought down a budget, eight weeks after Parliament was prorogued to prevent a new Liberal-NDP coalition government being formed. The NDP and the Bloc have clearly stated that they will vote against the budget, and have been joined by the...

The voters go to the polls in Iceland on 9 May to elect a new Parliament. The current government fell in the last few days as Iceland is buffetted by the winds of the economic crisis. The last election, in 2007, saw the centre-right...

Essential Research has produced a fascinating poll, asking voters who they thought was Australia's best post-WWII Prime Minister. The poll put the 21st century Prime Ministers well ahead of their predecessors, with 28% saying John Howard and 20% saying Kevin Rudd, followed by Bob...

The Canadian province of British Columbia will go to the polls on May 12, 2009, to elect 85 members of the Legislative Assembly, and vote on a referendum to change the electoral system used in future provincial elections. British Columbian politics is particularly unusual in...

As a special pre-inauguration treat, for all of you staying up through the night, check out AOL's slide show of "before and after" photos of US presidents at the beginning and end of their terms. In particular, check out Nixon, Reagan and Johnson.

After my series of election previews, I'm not gonna add another one to the pile (although my British Columbia post should come out tomorrow). But at Not a Hedgehog, you can read the second post in a series examining the upcoming election in Ecuador...

I'm reading Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment, which goes into the first hundred days of Franklin Roosevelt's administration in 1933. Alter in particular looks at the interregnum between the November election and the inauguration on March 5, the same date as every president was...

Via Pollbludger, a fascinating story in the Australian the other day has revealed plans by the NSW Nationals to trial using open primaries to preselect a candidate in a winnable seat for the 2011 NSW state election. All voters in the electorate would be...