September 2022 Esthursian general election

September 2022 Esthursian general election

23 September, 2022
All 80 to the House of Thanes A Forethane must govern by a working majority with confidence, usually needing 40 or more
Turnout	75.8%
First party Second party Third party   Leader Harold Osborne Rosemary Manning Edmund Grant Party Social Democrats Moderates Green-Left Leader since 30 January, 2015 16 November, 2018 11 July, 2022 Last election 33 10 Seats won 36 25 10 Seat change 3 New party Popular vote 33,986,160 25,007,751 8,821,904 Percentage 41.26% 30.36% 10.71% Swing 3.11% New party 0.17%   Fourth party Fifth party   Leader Graham Ingley Iðunn Þorsenn Party Esthur People's Party Helmark National Union Leader since 31 July, 2019 5 May, 2016 Last election 5 2 Seats won 6 3 Seat change 1 1 Popular vote 6,375,494 4,909,295 Percentage 7.74% 5.96% Swing 0.94% 1.17%
Forethane before election Harold Osborne Social Democrats Elected Forethane Harold Osborne Social Democrats

The September 2022 Esthursian general election will be held on September 23, 2022, as a result of the Early Election Act 2022 passed on September 8. The first snap election called since January 2011 and the first called by an incumbent government since the November 1982 general election, this was the first election in which two major blocs had formed around all three main parties.

The Moderate coalition, formed between the Liberals under new leader Wilfred Everett and the Conservative opposition, aimed to counter the perception of an increasingly left-leaning government by forming a pact across the centreground. This election also was the first since the election of High Minister Edward Wescaster, a Social Democrat, in May 2022.

Electoral system

In all recent Esthursian general elections, the houses tended to have relatively different compositions - with the Barony tending to, thanks to its party list elections, elect minorities and coalitions; and the Ministry, thanks to its first-past-the-post electoral system, usually electing majorities. This was the case in both 2011 and 2018, however not in 2014, which resulted in both houses remaining in a minority (later a coalition).

However, the Electoral Commission - empowered by outgoing Prime Minister John Largan at the end of 2014 - sent a Recommendation for Electoral Reform to the House of Barons in January 2022, outlining proposals to:

• redraw Barony boundaries, taking into account the 2019 Census data
• reform the Ministry system to Single Transferable Vote (STV), with approximately 5 members per constituency
• redraw Ministry boundaries to accommodate the above reform

This system, at first opposed by the incumbent Government, was used in the April 2022 Esthursian general election and will be used in this election likewise.

Voting eligibility

To vote in the general election, one had to be:

• on the Electoral Register;
• aged 15 or over on polling day;
• an Esthursian citizen;
• a resident at an address in the Union (or a Esthursian citizen living abroad who has been registered to vote in the UK in the last 25 years), and;
• not legally excluded from voting (for example, a convicted person detained in a mental hospital, or a person found guilty of certain "mistrustful"< corrupt or illegal practices) or disqualified from voting (members of the Royal Family and the Electoral Commission).

Individuals had to be registered to vote by midnight seven working days before polling day (16 September). Anyone who qualified as an anonymous elector had until midnight on the same night to register, as snap elections allow for. A person who has two homes (such as a university student with a term-time address but lives at home during holidays) may be registered to vote at both addresses, as long as they are not in the same electoral area, but can vote in only one constituency at the general election.