This year marks The PUB’s 12th anniversary on its opening.
Started in Christmas 2012, we still seem to be paddling along with content and discussion here in 2024.
A lot has changed in the world since then, for better or worse. But we do appreciate that this place is still around and gets actively posted on with comments.
Here’s an Open Thread to send off this eventful year. And with a Federal election due next year, looks like it’ll be a major one for Australia.
As most of us are probably aware, there are several elections occurring over the next month, so here’s a new thread since the previous one is getting a bit dated.
The most obvious are the US elections that will take place on 5 November (6 November Australian time, where the count will start around Midday AEDST time). The polls have it as a complete tossup pretty much.
Internationally, there is also a significant election to be held in Japan on 27 October, although the polls there seem to imply that it’ll be a business as usual result.
Locally, we have the ACT election tomorrow on Saturday 19 October, as well as NSW by-elections in Pittwater, Hornsby and Epping.
Then the week after that we have the Queensland state election on Saturday 26 October.
This is going to be a big week in international politics, because both France and the UK will be holding legislative elections.
In France, it will be held over 2 rounds on 30 June and 7 July via a runoff system. Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron’s Centrist Party is expected to suffer major losses to Marine Le Pen’s Populist Right party, with the French Socialist Left and Greens forming an alliance to contest this. Since the final results of Round 2 will be determined on what happens on Round 1, it’s difficult to predict what will happen. All that’s known is that there are 577 seats in the French Legislative Assembly, so a majority of 289 is needed. Currently, no parties seem to be able to secure that.
In the UK, there is a General Election due on 4 July (next Thursday), where the all-important BBC Exit Poll is due to be released on 10pm UK time, or 7am Friday Australian Eastern Time. But polls currently predict a massive majority to Keir Starmer’s Labour Party of 400+ seats with around 40% of the vote, what with the right wing vote split between incumbent Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party, both of them at around 15-20% of the vote, and with the UK’s First-Past-The-Post voting system, there are no preferences as there is in Australia, simply the candidate with the most votes wins each of the 650 seats.
As a result, Labour is expected to easily win in a record landslide, according to the current polls. We’ll know by Friday.
EDIT: Now that both elections have been resolved, I thought it best to update the image on what the results were.
Also results of the French election can be found here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_French_legislative_election#National_results
In a surprising result, Marine Le Pen’s far right National Front came 3rd, with the Socialist Left-Greens Alliance and Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble party utilising tactical voting very effectively to keep her lot out as best they could.
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