was up compared to 2004, @14,81 % vs 13,65%.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Easy and calm day here in Spain...

1% less in Spain  than four years ago...

It is going to ba an easy night at the electoral school.

And still 40 % Spaniards may vote for a parliament who does not select a prime-minister or comission head. This hows that there are a bunch of political freaks in Spain.. almost half the population like politics no matter what.

A pleasure


I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

UK voted on Thursday but results won't be through until tonight.

BBC NEWS | Wales | Hain expects 'bad' Euro results

New Welsh Secretary Peter Hain says tonight's European election results are going to be "very bad" for Welsh Labour.

Mr Hain told the BBC Wales Politics Show: "I'm not expecting any other than a very bad result tonight.

"I can't predict where we will come in the pecking order but this could be one of the worst results that Welsh Labour have faced in our recent history".

He said voters were angry with all parties over the expenses issue.

But the Neath MP said Labour were "carrying the can" because they were the party of government.

"There's no doubt that the Labour Party is in a bad place," he said.

"In Wales, we'll see that tonight in the European elections and across the United Kingdom we are not where we want to be."

At the last European election, Labour took two of Wales' four seats in the European Parliament with Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives each winning a seat.

When tonight's results are announced it is thought that Labour could be left with just one seat.

Ad astra per aspera

Ilta-Sanomat (in Finnish): Voting station queues grow as youth wakes up

After midday the school door (voting station) opened at a more frequent pace. Local  residents Harri Vesterinen, 35, and Suvi Pennanen, 28, had a reason for which voting is self-evident.

- Grandpa taught me that vote as long as you are able. He said that one day it might not longer be allowed, Pennanen says.

Grandfather probably fought in one of the 3 Finnish wars with the Soviet Union during WWII. (Or against the retreating Germans in Lapland)

You can't be me, I'm taken

Here in Italy turnout has decreased 30.68% from 34%. You can see data here on the official site of our ministry.

Projection for Austria:
ÖVP 29,6 (-3,1)
SPÖ 23,7 (-9,6)
HPM 18 (+4)
FPÖ 13,4 (+7,1)
Grüne 9,5 (-3,4)
BZÖ 4,7 (+4,7)

"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles." Sun Tzu

There are rumours thet the BNP have won one of the northern UK seats up for grabs. If so The fact that they have managed it while Brown is in charge will give added impetus to the Brown must go campaign.

If this is true, expect mass backbench revolts in the next few days.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

EU leaders face election embarrassment

European governments braced themselves for electoral embarrassment on Sunday as recession-hit voters turned to protest parties or failed to cast ballots at all in elections to the European parliament.

In what was the largest multi-national ballot in history, voters in 19 EU countries went to the polls on the fourth and final day of an election in which the bloc's eight other states had voted between Thursday and Saturday.

Governments in many countries, especially the UK, where Gordon Brown, prime minister, is struggling for his political life, were expected to be punished by voters angry and frightened at Europe's worst recession since the 1930s.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Frustrating for me that i'm so intellectually present in European and German politics, but am unable to vote as i'm an Ausländer.

Skennah Kowa

First projection for Germany
CDU+CSU 38,3
SPD 21,2
Grüne 11,6
FDP 10,8
Linke 7,5
Others 10,6


"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles." Sun Tzu

There's now a results story up: please put data in there, there are separate headings for groups of countries!

This morning I had the most annoying experience: my vote was refused at the polling station. Apparently an EU citizen in France must register separately for the two elections we can vote in, municipal and European.

I voted previously in another commune, where I only needed to register once, and voted in two European elections and two municipal. Having moved here I registered to vote and did so in last year's municipal. Now I'm told there are two sparate lists of EU citizens, one for the municipal, one for the European, and I (and about ten others) are on one and not the other.

So I had an argument with the mayor, but it's the law and there's no changing it. Of course, the town hall clerk who registered me did not inform me that I needed to register a second time for the European election.

I've since checked the elections pages of the Interior Ministry site, and sure enough the information is there - for those who know how to Google it. It says there are two separate lists, and inscription in the one does not entail inscription in the other. There are even two different downloadable forms to fill in, identical except for the heading (one says Municipal, the other European, duh, and one is printed in red, the other in green...). The laws referred to are separate, one for the European elections, the other for the municipal. These laws institute a separate ("complementary") list for non-French EU citizens, but do not stipulate that there must be two lists, one for each type of election. That must have been a brilliant administrative decision at some point.

It is beyond me to understand what useful purpose is served by this complication. We have political personnel wringing their hands about low participation, and motivated European citizens deprived of their vote by administrative barriers that have no sensible justification.

Administrative complication + absence of information = discrimination.

Hi all from from a noisy sports bar in sunny Spain!  I'm trying to do a results post for Ireland but really need to be able to import spreadsheet tables to do justice to the subtletess of votes transferring between candidates as candidates are eliminated from the count.  Anyone know a simple way of publishing a table in scoop without losing all the formatting?  I've tried saving the excel table as an xml and htm file but still lose the formating without which the numbers really aren't intelligible.  Many thanks if someone has a solution.

notes from no w here