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