A new regular column focusing on the international scene

Welcome to what’s planned to be a regular Sunday evening column, partly inspired by Sean Fear’s excellent Friday articles on UK politics. I can’t promise that this column will be quite as regular as Sean’s, but the plan is for it to come out fortnightly if possible and we’ll see how it goes.

The “mission statement” for the column will be to focus primarily on international politics, outside the PB mainstays of the UK and USA. There may be the occasional foray into British and American politics, finance and economics, and possibly even the odd bit of sport, but the main remit will be the “rest of the world”, looking at such things as forthcoming elections, key figures, comparative politics, and of course the betting markets.

Italy voting today and tomorrow

Italians are going to the polls for the Chamber of Deputies and Senate, with voting closing 3pm local time on Monday. Berlusconi remains a strong favourite to become PM for the third time – latest “in-play” prices are here – don’t forget to use the betting links to help support PB. Links for the Interior Ministry, RAI, and Corriere della Sera may be helpful.

Useful international weblinks

In addition to PB, the BBC, and Real Clear Politics, a couple of other sites are required reading for me every morning. The first of these is the Angus Reid site, which is updated daily with a selection of opinion polls from around the world. Sometimes they may be slightly out of date, with a UK YouGov poll appearing several days after PB, or stating the obvious – “McCain could keep Idaho red in 2008”, or rather esoteric, “Paraguayans oppose child labour” – but on the whole it’s an excellent site and indispensable for keeping up with public opinion in key countries.

I’d also recommend Bloomberg, which concentrates on finance but often has good politics stories too, and the superb Election Resources which has election data from all over the world and excellent background articles (Adam Carr’s site is very good too). Finally, one site from America and one from Europe: the US Election Atlas has a wealth of election results and maps (in the “traditional” colour scheme with the GOP in blue), as well as forums on which PB’ers can sometimes be found, and the Robert Schuman Foundation has writeups on all European elections – Europe in the broadest sense stretching to the Caucasus.

Free download

Today’s free download is the 2006 Italian election (Chamber of Deputies) by region.

Your articles welcome

Finally, your contributions are extremely welcome to this column – please send any international articles, which should of course be within the general ethos of PB, to me at electiongame@yahoo.co.uk.

Cheers & all the best,

Paul Maggs “Double Carpet”