"Morales leads in race in race for third-term victory" Associated Press October 11, 2014
EL ALTO, Bolivia — Evo Morales seems certain to win an unprecedented third term in Sunday’s presidential elections, according to polls.
In the latest poll, the 55-year-old Morales was favored by 59 percent of voters, some 40 points ahead of the most popular of four challengers.
The Equipos Mori poll, published Oct. 3 with an error margin of 3 percentage points, showed Morales winning all nine Bolivian states.
Morales’s goal Sunday isn’t just bettering his record — he won 64 percent of the vote in 2009 — but maintaining two-thirds control of Bolivia’s Senate and assembly, said Marcelo Silva, a political scientist at La Paz’s Universidad Mayor de San Andres. That would enable Morales to change the constitution so he could be re-elected indefinitely.
Something the U.S. government would not like at all!
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Also see: Bulgarian election winner pessimistic on forming government
That didn't make my printed paper, but this did:
"Bulgaria’s center-right party tops parliamentary vote" Associated Press October 06, 2014
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria’s center-right GERB party finished first in a parliamentary election Sunday but failed to win a majority, according to two exit polls.
The Alpha Research exit poll said the GERB party of former prime minister Boyko Borisov won 33 percent of the votes, with the Socialists a distant second at 16.5 percent. A separate exit poll by Gallup International said Borisov’s party won 34 percent of the vote, with the Socialists receiving 16.1 percent. Official results are expected Monday.
I have noticed that the $ociali$ts in Europe are different from the Socialists in South America.
So how come exit polls were not allowed in Scotland?
Parties have to win at least 4 percent of the votes to get seats in 240-seat Parliament, and six parties in addition to GERB and the Socialists are expected to do that. That could make forming a coalition government difficult.
The Socialists’ spokesman, Atanas Merdzhanov, conceded that the party suffered a ‘‘heavy defeat.’’
The Socialists, who took 27 percent of the vote in an election last year, formed a coalition government which commanded exactly half the votes in the last Parliament.
The nation of 7.3 million — poorest in the European Union — is struggling with corruption and a lack of faith in the governing elite.
Name me one that is not.
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And while I am here and there:
"Brazil’s presidential election forced into runoff vote" by Brad Brooks | Associated Press October 06, 2014
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s presidential election has been forced into a runoff because no single candidate won a majority of the vote.
With 92 percent of returns counted, President Dilma Rousseff won 41 percent of the first-round vote Sunday, according to results from Brazil’s top electoral court, which oversees elections. She will face Aecio Neves of the main opposition party, the Social Democrats, who had 34 percent of the vote. The second round will be held Oct. 26.
Neves, who comes from a long line of Brazilian politicians, staged a strong comeback to make it to the second round. He overtook former environment minister Marina Silva, who just four weeks ago held a double-digit lead over him and looked like she might win the presidency.
It has been Brazil’s most unpredictable campaign since the nation returned to democracy nearly three decades ago.
Rousseff held a commanding lead in preelection polls despite a recession, but she was not expecting to win a majority in the first round.
After trailing by 10 percentage points in August, Rousseff’s support rose to 46 percent in a poll released hours before the vote. Her long-ruling Workers’ Party flexed its muscles and engaged in what some called Brazil’s most negative campaign.
The incumbent’s aggressive campaigning badly eroded support for Silva, who only entered the race in mid-August after a plane crash killed her Socialist Party’s original candidate.
Related: Swiss Train, Brazilian Plane
It was thought Silva would tap into the widespread disdain Brazilians hold for the political class — anger that boiled over into roiling, nationwide antigovernment protests last year.
Which did not get much coverage in the Globe, meaning it was a real people's protest and not a CIA-supported overthrow effort.
Opinion polls taken just after the demonstrations over a year ago indicated Silva was among the few political figures unscathed, given her squeaky clean reputation amid what voters say is a sea of corruption.
But Silva has not withstood a barrage of attacks labeling her as indecisive and without the mettle needed to lead the globe’s fifth-largest nation — the message pounded on by Rousseff and Neves.
‘‘Marina Silva tried but was not able to convey her message of change. She’s only responding to attacks,’’ said Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
“I’m working with the idea there will be a runoff,’’ Rousseff said before voting in southern Brazil, where she lived for many years and first entered politics.
The race for second place between Silva and Neves, the former governor of Brazil’s second-biggest state, had been deadlocked, though momentum clearly swung in Neves’s favor in the past week as he gained support in surveys.
‘‘The fear campaign that Dilma and her marketing people have set up against Marina Silva has had a strong effect,’’ said David Fleischer, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia. ‘‘Dilma’s people are saying Marina will abolish . . . things they’ve gained through government social programs.’’
Must be a Democratic political consulting firm from the U.S. she is using.
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Also see: Fitchburg bank will pay $3.5m in TelexFree case
Related: Telexfree Ticker
