Djamila
Bosnjakinja
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My reason for starting this thread is because of the elections that were held today in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The polls have closed and results are starting to pour in.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is illegal for any electoral district to release its results until the full results can be released hours after the election is over. Individual districts can release only information related to voter turn-out, luckily this is itself a powerful indicator of the results of any election in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Voter turn-out so far is at 43.9%, and this includes mainly rural districts. 16 of Bosnia's largest cities have yet to report their voter turn-out, which will push this number much higher.
Voter turn-out is important because nationalist Muslims, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians always vote. Always. Moderates, minorities, youth, and so on usually vote in much lower numbers. The statistics compiled from previous elections in Bosnia since the war, both federal, county, and municipal, have shown that moderate political parties and moderate candidates do four times better when voter turn-out is at 55% as compared to 35%.
So this high voter turn-out is an amazingly good sign!
Also, it is a HUGE sign because already more people have voted than in previous elections. Between this election and our last, Bosnia introduced new identification cards (like driver's licenses, only for citizenship, not driving) and part of this process was registering new voters. The total number of people automatically registered to vote was 400,000 more than in the last election. So already voter turn-out in this election has exceeded that.
So, with all of this, I'm willing to predict SDA (Muslim) will win the most seats, followed by a fairly equal ZaBiH (Muslim majority, mixed) and SDP (Slight Muslim majority, very mixed). Next will be SDS and HDZ, Orthodox and Roman Catholic-only parties respectively. SRS, the Serbian Radical Party whose leaders are mainly indicted war criminals, has dropped in popularity among Bosnian Serbs - this in itself will have a huge and benefitial impact on Bosnian politics.
And that's it so far! More as it comes!
My reason for starting this thread is because of the elections that were held today in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The polls have closed and results are starting to pour in.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is illegal for any electoral district to release its results until the full results can be released hours after the election is over. Individual districts can release only information related to voter turn-out, luckily this is itself a powerful indicator of the results of any election in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Voter turn-out so far is at 43.9%, and this includes mainly rural districts. 16 of Bosnia's largest cities have yet to report their voter turn-out, which will push this number much higher.
Voter turn-out is important because nationalist Muslims, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians always vote. Always. Moderates, minorities, youth, and so on usually vote in much lower numbers. The statistics compiled from previous elections in Bosnia since the war, both federal, county, and municipal, have shown that moderate political parties and moderate candidates do four times better when voter turn-out is at 55% as compared to 35%.
So this high voter turn-out is an amazingly good sign!
Also, it is a HUGE sign because already more people have voted than in previous elections. Between this election and our last, Bosnia introduced new identification cards (like driver's licenses, only for citizenship, not driving) and part of this process was registering new voters. The total number of people automatically registered to vote was 400,000 more than in the last election. So already voter turn-out in this election has exceeded that.
So, with all of this, I'm willing to predict SDA (Muslim) will win the most seats, followed by a fairly equal ZaBiH (Muslim majority, mixed) and SDP (Slight Muslim majority, very mixed). Next will be SDS and HDZ, Orthodox and Roman Catholic-only parties respectively. SRS, the Serbian Radical Party whose leaders are mainly indicted war criminals, has dropped in popularity among Bosnian Serbs - this in itself will have a huge and benefitial impact on Bosnian politics.
And that's it so far! More as it comes!