After analyzing Kukes last time, today is the turn of Gjirokaster. You can find the 2009 results here. The Gjirokastra district elects five deputies and in 2009 PS won three mandates, while PD won two mandates. As you can see the "fight" here is only between PD and PS. LSI is too far away to make an impact. Another party that could make an impact is PBDNJ (Human Rights Union Party). However based on the numbers, PBDNJ needs to win 3 to 4 times more votes to get a mandate, so that's very unlikely. That leaves us PD and PS:
- For PD to get a third mandate it will need to win 8% more votes than in 2009 and PS to loose 8%.
- For PS to get a fourth mandate it will need to win 8.5% more votes than in 2009 and PD to loose 8.5%.
Both scenarios are very unlikely, so again with a probability of 99.9%, PS will get 3 mandates in Gjirokaster and PD will get 2 mandates.
Next time si the turn of Diber.
Last Sunday Vettel won the Malaysian Grand Prix and is now leading the standings, but the news of the week is the fact that Vettel ignored team orders and overtook his team mate Webber for the win. If you read the news and/or forums you'll find lots of opinions ranging from slamming Vettel as the devil to hailing him as the best. As always the truth is somewhere in the middle.
My view on the controversy, is that Vettel clearly did a mistake in ignoring team orders. The team must take absolute priority or otherwise things will get ugly. However, there are several things we need to take into considerations:
- Webber has done exactly the same thing in Silverstone 2011 and openly saying that he didn't want to obey to team orders (It's funny that lots of anti-Vettel people make up excuses that Silverstone was different and "bla bla bla" while the man himself did wrote a BBC column explaining his decision to attack Vettel).
- Webber went too far in Brasil 2012, almost crashing Vettel, while Vettel was fighting for the title, while Webber for nothing. Obviously Vettel didn't forget it.
- It's clear that Vettel is the better driver in Red Bull and based on the last years, those seven points may decide the title. It's such a big risk for Vettel to let it go.
So even though Vettel was in the wrong, the biggest problem goes to Red Bull/Horner. If Webber didn't obey the orders before, how can they expect Vettel to obey? Additionally they did put Vettel in a strategy that would give him the best tires at the end of the race. What is the point of that, if he cannot overtake Webber? And last, it's only the second race in the championship: Why have team orders?
Next question is what happens next? People are going as far as suggesting to ban Vettel from one race. I find it ridiculous :) Vettel is a triple World Champion and fighting for the fourth. I don't think Red Bull is that stupid to give away 25 points to the competition. Most probably there will be a penalty to Vettel, in the form of money/benefits, but that's all. While regarding the relationship with Webber they were never best friends and not much is going to change. Webber will fight again to have his buddy (Alonso) with the Championship, but Vettel will not need any help to get his fourth title :)
P.S Even though, Vettel was in the wrong, it showed one thing that I did like: he earned the "Baby Schumacher" nickname. Most people will not agree, but to win it all, you need that attitude :)
General elections in Albania (to be held on 23 June) are a very hot issue and there are a lot of things that you can write about. However I'm going to focus on the math aspect of them. The law currently in use is a regional proportional one with 12 districts to elect 140 deputies in total. There was a hot debate the last months about the way the mandates are distributed among the districts, however the decision is:
- Tirana - 32
- Fier - 16
- Elbasan - 14
- Durres - 13
- Korce - 12
- Vlore - 12
- Shkoder - 11
- Berat - 8
- Lezhe - 7
- Diber - 6
- Gjirokaster - 5
- Kukes - 4
Now, based on the 2009 results and on the mathematical formulas used to assign deputies, we can make some predictions for the 2013 elections. Right now there aren't yet confirmed coalitions, however in some of the districts (especially small ones) the results are "already decided". We'll start out by analyzing the smallest one and go on from there.
Before digging deep into the numbers, the current rumors about parties and coalitions are:
- PD (Democratic Party), currently in power will have a large coalition, that will include among others PR (Republican Party), PDK (Demo-Christian Party) and LZHK (Alliance for National Development). On the other side FRD (Democratic New Spirit) is a new party born out of PD that will most likely not participate in any of the big coalitions.
- PS (Socialist Party) is trying hard to get as many parties on board as possible, including FRD, LSI (Socialist Movement for Integration) currently in coalition with PD, AK (Red & Black Alliance), etc. However most likely it will have on board the same parties as in 2009, excluding PBDNJ (Human Rights Union Party) who probably will go on it's own.
- LSI (Socialist Movement for Integration) probably holds the key of the elections and it's taking its time to decide. Most likely will not be part of the big coalitions above.
- The smaller parties that most probably will not be part of any coalitions are PBDNJ, FRD and AK. It will be hard for them to get any seats, but we'll analyze them later.
Now let's start and analyze the numbers for the Kukes district. Here you can find the results for the 2009 elections. PD was able to get 3 deputies, while PS 1. As you can see LSI is far away and will not have any impact in Kukes. Also the new parties should get more than 20% to be a threat which is impossible. That leaves 4 mandates to be distributed between PD and PS.
- For PD to get all 4 mandates it will need to get about 12.5% more than 2009 (and PS to loose the same amount). The chances for this are practically nil.
- For PS to get 2 mandates it will need to get about 7.5% more than 2009 (and PD to loose the same amount). Again this is highly unlikely.
So whatever happens, the result in Kukes will be 3 deputies for PD and 1 for PS with a probability of 99.9%.
Next week, I'll analyze Gjirokaster. Until then, have a nice time :)
Albert