Talk:2005 Norwegian parliamentary election

Untitled

I have done some calculations at my website of the election results, which show that the combined right-wing parties polled more votes than the combined left-wing parties, yet the left won the elections with 88 seats to 81. This shouldn't happen in a pure PR system like Norway's. I can only surmise that there is a bias in the electoral system in favour of the northern counties where the left is strongest. Is this the case? Adam 12:14, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

The 150 district mandates are distributed across the counties according to a system where the counties receive one point per inhabitant and 1.8 points per square kilometer. In addition there is a levelling mandate in each county. Jens Stoltenberg claims his side polled the most votes, by including the votes for the Red Electoral Alliance for his side. --Samuelsen 12:44, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Malapportionment in Norway! I'm shocked. How much more is a vote in Finmark worth than a vote in Oslo? Adam 13:20, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

            Eligible to vote      Seats       /
Finnmark         52958              5       10592
Oslo            393937             17       23173

This includes the levelling mandates. --Samuelsen 13:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Enough to make Jacques Chirac blush! My faith in Nordic probity is destroyed. Adam 14:48, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

If you take Frp's votes into consideration, then you also have to count in RV's votes. Then the left wing did indeed get most votes. A + SV + Sp + RV got 1,299,315 votes. The right wing, Frp + H + V + Krf got 1,289,269 votes. Other minor parties got the last 50,529 votes. The voting system, where Oslo votes is worth less than Finnmark votes may be unfair in some ways - but, if all votes were worth the same, then Oslo would get about 25% of the parliament, while the area of Oslo is only 0.1% of the country's total area. That would probably have been even more unfair. SAB 19:16, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Um, I thought democratic parliaments were meant to represent people, not uninhabited tundra. If 25% of Norwegians live in Oslo, then they should have 25% of the seats. On whom would this be unfair? Rocks? Trees? Sheep? Adam 23:15, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

This is the result of a conscious political choice. The laws concerning the parliamentary elections is but one of many political areas in which Norway actively seeks to incite and uphold activity and settlement in rural parts of the country. Zerblatt 23:20, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Whatever the rationale, it is a negation of democratic principle. Why have elections at all? Adam 00:33, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Opening section

I have reverted to my version of the opening section which is (a) in better English (b) contains more relevant facts. The most relevant facts about an election are who won and lost and why they won. It is not the date on which advanced voting could begin.

Secondly, the most important fact about this election is that the left won only because the electoral system is rigged in its favour by the preferential allocation of seats to the larger counties like Finmark and Hedmark, where the left is strongest. This table shows this clearly:

                              Actual  Notional  Actual       Left    Notional
COUNTY                        Seats   Seats     Left seats   Vote %  Left seats
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Akershus            356,045    16      17         7          42.3     7
Aust-Agder           77,264     4       4         2          42.1     2
Buskerud            181,932     9       9         6          50.0     5
Finnmark             52,958     5       3         3          59.4     2
Hedmark             145,239     8       7         6          64.9     5
Hordaland           331,552    15      16         6          40.4     6
Møre og Romsdal     183,294     9       9         4          40.4     4
Nord-Trøndelag       96,077     6       5         4          67.8     3
Nordland            177,966    10       9         6          56.6     5
Oppland             140,480     7       7         5          64.8     5
Oslo                393,937    17      19         8          46.0     9
Østfold             195,742     9      10         4          47.8     5
Rogaland            285,562    13      14         5          37.2     5
Sogn og Fjordane     78,690     5       4         3          59.6     2
Sør-Trøndelag       204,555    10      10         6          57.5     6
Telemark            125,793     6       6         3          55.2     3
Troms               114,029     7       6         4          50.4     3
Vest-Agder          117,158     6       6         1          34.6     2
Vestfold            166,468     7       8         4          42.2     3
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total             3,421,741   169     169        87                  82
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The columns show, from left to right:

• the number of eligible voters in each county
• the number of seats allocated to each county
• the number of seats each county should have based on its population
• the number of seats the three left parties actually won in each county
• the proportion of votes the left won in each county
• the number of seats the left should have won in each county

The net result is that the left would only have won 82 seats if the electoral system was fair, and the various right parties would, in one combination or another, have retained government.

It's not often that a democratic election produces a result which is as blatantly wrong in terms of representing the will of the people as this one was, and that fact needs to be mentioned in the opening paragraph.

Adam 02:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Here is another calculation. If the votes cast for parties which failed to gain representation are deducted from the vote total (as they should be), then the three left parties gained 49.4% of the vote and 51.5% of the seats, while the four right parties gained 50.6% of the vote and 48.5% of the seats. Adam 05:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

You are once again using the wrong figures. If you are counting the Frp votes, you must also count RV's votes. Then, the percentages are: Left: 49,23%, Right: 48,85%, Others: 1,91%. Please stop fixing the vote results like this before you continue to talk about democracy.SAB 18:13, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't really understand why an Australian as you is so fixated with Norwegian elections. It seems you do not speak Norwegian and one wonders how actually you can be informed about the debate here.

The electoral system is not contested in Norway. No one complained, and the vote-sum issue result was only sidekick news. The relatively higher representativity of scarcely populated areas is something with deep roots in Norwegian culture, where farmers have played an important role through history. Even if this is the core issue of the Centre party, it's not like the left imposed this law. The election is not "rigged", as you arrogantly claim.

You seem to forget (as it was pointed out before in this page) that the Red Electoral Alliance gathered more votes than the difference between the red-greens and government + progress party, so your argument is fundamentally trivial, arguably inflammatory and ultimately nonexistent. Surely, RV would be more likely to support externally a Stoltenberg government than the Progress party to support a new Bondevik one (filling you in: Hagen hates Bondevik, and the feeling is mutual. The reason is that Bondevik would rather sell his soul to the devil than letting the Progress party into the government. Hagen had already stated he would not supported externally a new Bondevik government).

Your insistence on this detail is misrepresenting the acceptance of the results (that no one contested). If you prefer pure proportional, nationwide electoral system, it's your legitimate opinion. However, if you advocate any other system as being undemocratic, you have to classify a bunch of countries (all except the Netherlands I think, but then again it's a monarchy) as undemocratic.

So would you please use your energies in a more productive way. --Orzetto 23:11, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

In reply:

• I am fixated with all elections, not just Norwegian ones :)
• This is the English-language Wikipedia, and is open to all editors. I am free to edit on Norwegian topics, just as you are free to edit on Australian ones.
• Australia has a long history of malapportionment favouring rural districts, and a long history of campaigning to get rid of it, so I know something about this subject. In Australia it favours the conservatives. In Norway it favours the left. I am a supporter of the left, but that isn't the point.
• The point is that rural malapportionment is fundamentally anti-democratic. Making votes in Finmark worth more than twice the value of votes in Oslo is a negation of democracy, and sooner or later, in a finely balanced party situation such as Norway's, it will produce a result where a government is elected on a minority vote.
• There are always "cultural" excuses for these anti-democratic practices. Australian farmers argued for a century that they were entitled to more seats than their numbers merited on "cultural" grounds. Ultimately these arguments are just sectional pleading and have to be rejected.
• Whether Norwegian elections are more or less democratic than those in other countries is also not relevant. I agree that they are better than most. But, as we can now see, they are not perfect. I presume most Norwegians were (rightly) critical of the US system for allowing Bush to win in 2000 on a minority vote. Well, now the same thing has happened in Norway.
• It may be, as you say, that everyone in Norway is perfectly happy with this (although I doubt Mr Bondevik is), but that isn't relevant to what should go in a Wikipedia article. An encyclopaedia's job is to tell the truth, not to reflect popular opinion.
• Having said all that, I am not going to get into an edit war over what appears in the article.

Adam 02:56, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

You are admitting your bias. Your comments may have relevance in Australian elections, not in Norwegian ones. Bondevik did not claim the election was rigged, and stated clearly and shortly "This is not important"[1].

This is exclusively your opinion, supported by no one of relevance for this article.

The criticism of Bush's election is that Al Gore actually got more votes than Bush, and would have won the recount in Florida if it had been held. Summing up four different parties is a different thing: the Progress party was not, and was not going to be part of the government. They offered to enter, but they were rejected by the others, who would accept external support at most. In turn, the secretary of the Progress party, Hagen, very clearly stated he would whack Bondevik in any case, and given the Progress party's success he surely would have had the numbers to do it. The Red Electoral Alliance, instead, was not in the red-green coalition, but never talked about Stoltenberg in such terms.--Orzetto 09:52, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I am indeed admitting my bias. I have two biases:

• Democratic elections should accurately reflect the will of the people by giving all citizens one vote of equal value.
• Encyclopaedia articles should state facts and not reflect cosy national mythologies.

However, as I said, I am not going to pursue this matter. Adam 10:33, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Look, take your paternalistic besserwisser attitude and shove it up where it came out from. You have blatantly tried to cast the legitimacy of the elections in doubt for your ideological bias, and have been trolling at length on this page. This even though you do not speak a word of Norwegian, and could not follow the debate nor cite any source of this "scandal" you uncovered.

You have consistently ignored that Red-green+RV gained more votes than government+Progress, presenting the results as those of a stolen election. I am aware of no one making such claims but you.

If by cosy national mythologies you mean the Norwegian electoral system, you simply show you learnt nothing. --Orzetto 17:53, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

• I always know I am winning an argument when opponents resort to personal abuse.
• I don't need to speak Norwegian to be able to read election statistics.
• The votes of parties which failed to gain representation don't count. The relevant fact is that the parties holding the majority of seats in the Storting won fewer votes than the parties holding the minority of seats. That is a negation of democratic principle in any language.
• Have a nice day. Adam 11:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• You do need to speak Norwegian to know whether the result is accepted by all parties, which it was.
• You really make a fool of yourself by saying that "The votes of parties which failed to gain representation don't count". Your argument was that "all votes should count for one, independently of where he's from", and now you say something directly opposite, only that now you discriminate by political opinion, not by region—way more antidemocratic. --Orzetto 03:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Based on your argumentation, claiming the election to be undemocratic or rigged, i'm suprised to see you're claiming the votes of a party failing to gain representation (RV) as not counting. You should be aware that RV would be much more likely to gain seats if urban votes counted more. Even more important, according to the Progress Party they wouldn't support a new "right" government if not included. In other words, if the "right" which you continue to describe as one unity would fail to establish a government. Probably the result of such a result would be a minority government established by the Labour Party with an external support from Socialist Left, Center Party and Christian Peoples Party. A situation not unfamiliar to Norwegian politics. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.108.97.185 (talk) 17:27, 8 May 2007 (UTC).

Turnout

This page claims a turnout of 77.1% while Politics of Norway gives 76.7% Anyone knows the correct number? Fornadan (t) 13:12, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

[2] says 77.1 %. --Samuelsen 16:07, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Gentlemen, gentlemem......

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do this, because I've never come across or participated in such a web page before, but I just wanted to comment really. I feel that Adam was simply observing a fact, that individual votes in Oslo have less than half the value of rural votes in the north of Norway. He is entitled to the opinion that this is anti-democratic. (It so happens that in the case of this election, the victorious alliance had the majority of votes as well as seats, but it could also happen that this not be the case). I'm not sure I necessarily agree with his concern, however. I think that cultural issues, population issues etc are valid factors to be considered. It is probable that the agriculture argument is still valid in Norway and that, as time goes on, when it needs to change, Norwegian people will campaign for it themselves. I am Irish, and have only a few words of Norwegian, by the way!

No, the victorious alliance did not have the majority of votes as well as seats. They have fewer votes but more seats. Adam 11:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Undemocratic? Depends on how you look at it

Well, the disproportionate amount of seats to the rural districts is to protect their viability, and being a kind of insurance against majority tyranny. Maybe matematically and principally evry vote should count the same. Then again, by what right does Oslo-people decide what happens to Finnmark? It's a complicated issue, and not so black/white as some contend. I think the system works fine, as Norway is big, sparsely populated with serious regional differences. And ususally, the percentages are more correct than here, and even here, it's not far off. It was just a very tight election. 129.177.76.173 10:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

• The way to protect against "majority tyranny" in a democracy is through constitutional safeguards, a bill of rights or legislation, not by rigging the electoral system.
• If people in Finnmark dislike being ruled from Oslo so badly they can secede (just as Norway seceded from Sweden) and I would support their right to do so.
• Norway is big and sparsely populated? I'm Australian, remember? Don't make me laugh.

Adam 11:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

All in all, this has been a very interesting lesson in the arrogance and condescension that lurks behind Europe's veneer of high culture. Thanks for changing my view of Norway. Adam 11:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

No political system is without flaws. The Norwegian electoral system reflects the viewpoints of the population of Norway and is generally accepted. How come accepting this is "arrogance" and makes the system undemocratic? The system reflects what the population of Norway want, it would be undemocratic if it did not reflect this. Cybbe 17:29, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

It is one of the paradoxes of democracy that something can be the will of the majority of the people and yet still be undemocratic. It was once the will of the majority of the American people that Blacks not be allwed to vote. That was undemocratic whatever the majority thought. An electoral system that gives farmers (or anyone else) disproportionate representation is undemocratic, even if no-one in Norway thinks so. Of course the Norwegian people are sovereign and can organise their electoral system any way they like. But "one vote, one value" is a fundamental principle of democracy, and that remains true whether Norwegians think so or not. Adam 00:33, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

What makes you think that your opinion is right, while an entire nation is wrong? You must have an unrealisticly high degree of self-esteem. SAB 08:44, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Is the resort to ad hominem argument in place of discussion of political principle a national characteristic of Norwegians? Or just Norwegian Wiikipedians? I hadn't heard this before. I might add something about it to the Norway article. Adam 09:31, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

First, please use proper indenting. Second, you should remember that the Norwegian election law is made by a democratically elected parliament, which is by far a more democratic process than if one Australian should dictate our laws. Third, this is not the correct forum for a dicussion like this; I think we should stop here. SAB 12:23, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

To no one in particular

Wikipedia isn't a message board for the discussion of your personal opinions. So if you have problems with the current article, could you please give concrete examples of what you don't like? Fornadan (t) 11:40, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The article is fine, as long as a neutral word (disparity) is used for explaining the difference between actual vote count and representation. SAB 12:27, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Stay tuned for Malapportionment in Norway. Adam 12:29, 30 September 2005 (UTC)