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Wall Street Journal The 2012 présidentielles are thrown into disarray The news that IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been charged with the rape of a hotel chambermaid in New York has sent shockwaves through both international and French politics. The situation worsened yesterday for him after he was held without bail in Rikers Island prison. The immediate impact is on the IMF, as he was due to attend key meetings in Europe concerning the Portuguese bailout as well as the…

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Globe & Mail After Fianna Fáil and the True Finns, another mould-breaker? Despite the death of Bin Laden (and what will the impact of that be for US 2012?), normal democratic politics continues. It seems that many recent elections have deserved the “historic” tag – Ireland and Finland this year, plus a clutch in 2010 including the UK, Australia and the US Midterms. Could today’s election in Canada be about to join the list of mouldbreakers? At the start of…

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RTE Record seat hauls for FG, Labour, and Sinn Fein as FF collapse Links: RTE live blog RTE map and results Irish Times Irish Independent Many smaller European countries manage to count their votes in four hours or less, but Ireland isn’t one of them. However, the marathon vote count in this historic election is finally drawing to a close, but with 16 Dail seats remaining to be filled, and four constituencies still counting (Laois-Offaly, Wicklow, and recounts in both…

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Irish Times FG set for government, FF for meltdown, Labour for coalition? Links: RTE live RTE constituency map One of the world’s longest election counts is now underway, with unofficial (but normally very accurate) vote tallies coming in from all over Ireland. Most first counts won’t be declared until mid-afternoon or even early evening, and it’s likely to take well into Sunday for the counting to near its finish. What is already clear is that this will be a historic…

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Wikimedia Commons Dan Hamilton revisits Brazil one week before the election This time next week Brazil’s 190 million citizens will choose their fourth directly-elected leader since the end of military rule in 1985 and a successor to the centre-left President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva. Given Brazil’s incredibly efficient system of electronic voting, results can be expected within an hour or so of the close of polls at around 23:00GMT. Voters in Brazil’s twenty six states will choose between centrist…

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Dagens Nyheter Are the Social Democrats heading for a historic defeat? Today’s election in Sweden looks set to see the return of a centre-right government for the first time in decades, perhaps alongside the Social Democrats failing to top the poll for the first time in about a century. A possible fly in the ointment for a Reinfeldt second term is the rightwing Sweden Democrats breaking the 4% threhsold to secure seats in the Riksdag. If you haven’t already read…

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Stuart Dickson previews next Sunday’s election in Sweden Are the Swedish Social Democrats, the most successful labour party in the world, about to have their worst general election since 1908? As an undergraduate studying economics at Strathclyde University in the late 80s, I can remember our lecturers spending time on expositions of the Middle Way between capitalism and communism, exemplified by the Swedish Model or Folkhemmet (The Peoples’ Home). At that time of my life I thought of myself as…

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