Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
On the think about it competition, Eveline de Winter has written about the predict09 site from a Belgian perspective.

Th!nk about it: The predictor

Although the socialist would be happy with this prognosis, because at the moment they are not scoring so well in the Belgian polls, I do see a problem with the conclusion. They still count the Flemish socialist as a coalition of SPA and Spirit. This shows a lack of knowledge of the Belgian politics. Since April of 2008 Spirit had been called VlaamsProgressieven until the split of the coalition with SPA in January and then they changed their name into Sociale Liberale Partij (SLP). So the coalition no longer exists. Another coalition that is no more is CD&V - NVA. In the tables you can only find Christen-Democratisch en Vlaams (CD&V), NV-A is not even mentioned. So the fragmentation of votes will be even bigger than the researchers have predicted. Belgium may be a small country, but if they have made the same mistakes with other countries the fault margin will be even bigger than normal.

So although it seems like a good initiative you immediately begin to wonder about the accuracy of these predictions. You can actually find an answer on the site. Are they accurate? Fat chance. The creators themselves admit that it's not clear yet which parties or coalitions will still be standing in the upcoming elections and more importantly it's also not clear yet how the economic crises will affect voting behaviour.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Wed Apr 8th, 2009 at 05:37:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Others have rated this comment as follows:

Display:

Occasional Series