AUR's local party HQ in Constanta: RTVRN meets street art. Julius Caesar up top, shawarma place on the side. Does the shawarma cater to the Roman palate, one wonders. “Easy on the garum.” h/t @miyhnea.bsky.social

PB as the drain around which the others circle, with all but GERB, DPS, and PP-DB getting sucked in. A political space one doesn't see every day. Voter transfer estimates by Alpha Research exit poll, scale with correspondence analysis.

Mr Radev's PB nearly as popular with younger voters as with the older ones. PB's main voter sources by the '24 vote: non-voters, ITN (ECR), BSP (S&D), Revival (ESN). Per Alpha Research exit poll: alpharesearch.bg/post/1049-19...

With the Hungarian and Bulgarian elections bringing major, but rather different, updates to the party systems, it comes to mind that KMMT will turn 30 next year.

Turnout in Bulgaria's yesterday's elections on track to nearly match that in the first election of the 8-election 2020s series.

There's been more of these elections lately, it seems.

There's been more of these elections lately, it seems.

Woodpigeons and jackdaws are among the few avian winners in environmental change in Britain. And the avian masters North East city gardens. Yet, the contrast: Like chimps to rabbits, brain-wise. If rabbits were twice the size and all brawn. As if they succeeded by complementing each other.

Fidesz ended up winning only 10/106 single-member constituencies: • 3 with the narrowest of margins • A further 4 with small margins (at least compared to Tisza's)

A century-old dataviz painting: Jeskyně [The Cave], 1926] by Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942) Oil on canvas. Held by National Gallery Prague.

On punditry and opinion-pronouncing, as usual.

Chart updated with Fidesz now barely above 25% of the seats with nearly 40% of the votes. It took a while for the ice cream to lick back, as the Hungarian idiom goes. But then it did.

Following Mr Magyar's statement, questions return in Slovakia on Mr Orbán's role in the spike in migrants illegally crossing the Slovak-Hungarian border during the 2023 campaign. Mr Fico's Smer campaigned intensely on the issue.

Mr Magyar's campaign visits as charted by Vox Populi, here in Eng. NB this in itself doesn't evidence a large conversion of Fidesz voters. Fidesz vote in mil (party/MMC): 1990 - 0.2 1994 - 0.4 1998 - 1.2 2002 - 2.2 2006 - 2.3 2010 - 2.7 2014 - 2.2 2018 - 2.6 2022 - 2.8 2026 - 2.1

This Sunday, it'll be interesting to see the turnout in Bulgaria, now that Mr Radev's Progressive Bulgaria offers the voters something new that seems to be in demand. In the seven 2020s elections (so far), turnout has not reached 50%.

Slovakia's party system based on voters' 1st & 2nd choices ↔️ gov't vs oppo ↕️ ? 2 main blocs: 🟥🟫 National-social: Smer, Republika, ĽSNS, PNP; Hlas near, but a bit off 🟨 Civic-bourgeoisie: PS, SaS, D, ZĽ 2 almost blocs: 🟦 EPP conservatives: KDH, S (exOĽaNO), Szövetség 🟪 Alt-zone: SNS, KÚ, SR

Using journal editors and reviewers as cheap human supervision to iterate one-shotted bot-drafted papers could be great at finding the minimum publishable unit. One person's slop is another's successful adaptation to the technological and institutional environment that we build. As are pigeon nests.

Varieties of popular regional porridge in early 20th century Slovakia: barley, millet, buckwheat, spelt, rye, and sprouted wheat. No oats, though. From the Ethnographic Atlas of Slovakia, with partial machine translation.

The Nibbles plot updated.

“This is when the ice cream licks back” is the fitting Hungarian idiom, I'm told. 🇭🇺 “Ilyen, amikor a fagyi visszanyal”

Mr Orbán's Fidesz built itself an electoral system that boosted it until it didn't. In 2014, the first year under the system, Fidesz-KDNP won a ⅔ majority with 27% of the registered voters. Now, with 30% of registered voters, it is on track to 29% of the seats. __ Made in base R with extrafont

Long after there are no human researchers left, and all research is done by machines, they'll be putting statistical significance into hypotheses as in H1: X has a significant correlation with Y And doing their best in other ways, too, to keep the null hypothesis significance testing rituals alive

Hungary being a European literary power, it'd be appropriate for a Hungarian author to write a great novel that does for Mr Orbán's clientelist 'national bourgeoisie' what Zola did for Napoleon III's elites in His Excellency Eugène Rougon.

"Is Hungary a democracy if the incumbent lost?" Questions like this assume a binary true essence. Essentialism and coarsening are dear to human minds. They also often happen to offer sub-optimal deals in the trade-off between bandwidth and storage demands and signal retention and processing demands.

Mr Fico may be losing an ally on the EU stage with Mr Orbán's loss. I'd wait with declaring him devoid of allies. After this Sunday, he may ally with Bulgaria's Mr Radeev on some issues. Perhaps including Ukraine. Especially if the latter governs with the far right. And there's Mr Babiš, too.

Slovakian cartoonist Martin Shooty Šútovec for Denník N @dennikn.bsky.social

Tisza (EPP) is a conservative party. Yet, the new parliament only has Fidesz-KDNP (PfE) and MHM (ESN) beside it, both in the authoritarian left space. In this way, Tisza still it represents the liberal-right pole of the current CEE pattern of authoritarian-left vs libertarian-right. Per CHES.

Yet another echo of "capitalists without capitalism" — here, Mr Orbán's client oligarchs, above market discipline — and "capitalism without capitalists" — here, Magyar's technocratic managers of multinationals.

Tisza's 3.1 m votes is also more than what Fidesz, or for that matter anyone else in Hungary, ever won. Despite the electorates being larger in the past.

Fidesz-KDNP is on track to ~28% of the seats with ~30% of the electorate. That's a larger electorate share than in 2014. Then, they got 67% of the seats with 28% of the electorate. Thanks to lower turnout and their electoral engineering. Now that very engineering has hit them hard. “Loop closed.”

Mr Fico didn't go to the bookmakers, I'd guess. The question is, how much did he bet on Mr Orbán where the stakes of much greater consequence than his pocket money, and who is to bear the costs of these bets. The answer to this will be forthcoming in increments, I suspect.

With the count at 53% TISZA and 38% Fidesz, the lead is even larger than the pooled polls *only* by independent and opposition-affiliated pollsters, which over a week ago was at 50% vs 38%.

Fidesz-KDNP currently at ~28% of seats with ~39% of the vote, having stepped on its own electoral-engineering rake. "A thing like that...," as Pete Campbell used say.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As usual: Anyone who tries hard enough can learn tactics. With some talent, one can master strategy too. But only the best can do logistics.

Hungary's population pyramids on four elections years: 1990 - the 1st free and fair 2010 - Fidesz's return to power 2022 - the previous 2026 - today's Per the UN WPP '24 estimates. NB not all adult inhabitants can vote, and some Hungarian citizen live abroad and are thus not in the pyramids.

Turnout in Hungary is exceptionally high today. Here's what Fidesz vote shares looked like compared to the whole electorate, as opposed to valid votes. The 54% in 2022 was 37% of the eligible electorate. Should today's turnout really reach 75-80% the '22 vote would amount to 46-49% of the vote.

👀 Source: Nemzeti Választási Iroda

The Liberal Party of the Kingdom of Hungary [🟩 in the map] dissolved 120 years ago on this day, after dominating the scene since its founding in 1875. The 1906 elections that followed saw a new party system take shape. Only ~12% of the adult population could vote.

Fidesz Multi-Member Constituency or Party-list vote and overall seats, in % elex V | S ______________ 1990 9 | 6 1994 7 | 5 1998 28 | 38 2002 41 | 42 2006 43 | 37 2010 53 | 59 2014 45 | 59 <-- Fidesz got its electoral system in place 2018 49 | 59 2022 54 | 59

— In this episode, we'll talk about what our descendants are getting wrong about the Paleo Diet — “Picking friends' brains,” as I like to call it — Gotta get that fat! — Don't forget the nitrogen! — There, we'll be picking … stay tuned, folks — Spoiler alert, wiggle-waggle … — Spoilers, indeed! Yum!

Spring [1978] by Andrej Doboš [1911 – 1997] Oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm www.webumenia.sk/dielo/SVK:VS...

Reviewing pet peeve: journals inviting to review create a new account linked to the reviewer's institutional email despite the reviewer already having an account in their system, even if that account is already linked with ORCID. Lately, this has become the norm in my experience.

Could Hungary's voting system swing the election? Fraser McIlwraith and I took a look: www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

“Putting the markets through a rinse cycle on maximum spin will make them anti-fragile” is what Lysenkoist economics might have said.