2402 Empherias general election

The 2402 Empherias general election was held on 28 March 2402, to elect 600 members to the Empherian House of Parliament. It was the first general election since the 2395 Revolution and subsequent appointed Populist government in 2397. It resulted in the incumbent Populist party losing their parliamentary majority, short 13 seats for a majority, although they did not seek a formal coalition - believing that the Socialist party would support most of their acts of government. Regardless, the Prime Minister Felix D'laminet was re-elected for a second term.

This election in particular sees the first election for many political parties running for office. No royalist parties ran, the first time this had ever occurred in Empheri electoral history, although they weren't banned from doing so. The two major political parties from before the revolution, the Liberal Party, and the Conservative Party, both ran under reformed policies and governments after their ideologies had shifted from the revolution. No party was in favour of returning to a pre-revolution situation. New parties included the left-wing parties of the incumbent People's Populist Party (dubbed PPP), and the People's Socialist Party (dubbed PSP), which split the left wing vote. The Green party, originally named not for it's later environmental views, ran for the first time and was considered a more radical alternative to the Socialists. The final new major party was the Nationalist party which advocated for more militarism and national pride.

The results were a plurality victory of the Populists winning 288 seats. Second place Conservatives, led by Josef Martinique, received 198 seats; followed by the Socialists, led by Elizabeth Rose, receiving 50 seats; the Liberals, led by Gregorik Daise, receiving 42 seats; the Green party, led by Henry Patterson, receiving 16 seats; and the Nationalists, led by Henry Artenflower, receiving just 6 seats. This makes this one of two modern elections where all parties receiving more than 5 seats, the other being the 2468 election. Other parties, such as the Centrist Initiative Party and the Bokanist Values Party, ran but did not receive any seats or significant votes.

There were no resignations from any party leaders following the election as it mainly established the foundations and many did not know what were good and bad election victories yet. This election saw the highest turnout for the country in history comparatively to population, not eligible to vote, but this would later be broken.

Background
Lucy King had held the position of Prime Minister for the entirety of the previous term and held a very stable role in the cabinet, the parliament and the public's view. The economy was riding at a growth which led to some fears of stagnation, and the Liberals had been presenting viable alternative to economic policy from the opposition. Still, the Prime Minister Questions' weren't as hard hitting as the Liberals would like.

The term had a surprising lack of defections with several MPs choosing to switch parties. There was also less drama from minority parties such as the Conservatives, Centrists or Greens. Major upsets from parliament include one Ankrank MP being suspended for a month on two occasions in April 2496 and June 2497 for poor language in the Parliament during debate. Despite this, he kept his seat in parliament.

Overall, prior to the 2499 election, it seemed like the Liberals were seeing a large increase in their popularity although notably this change in support was more from the Nationalists to the Liberals. The mass exodus away during the 2491 election during Jack Bastion was hard to recover but as Nationalist MP numbers returned to regular numbers, it was inevitable that the charismatic Turner would gain popularity and trust. The Centrist leader Oskar Nikolei managed to embarrass the Nationalist leader Pippin Pierre during a debate on social conditions for immigrants in a 2498 session.

Between the 2495 election and the next election, two parties elected new leaders. The Nationalists replaced Kasper Simons with Pippin Pierre following numerous election losses and his resignation and wish to leave the public eye. Pierre was seemingly qualified, having been the Nationalist's potential Chancellor of the Exchequer for some years before the selection. It is to note that there was no public leadership election for this. The Greens also replaced their leader Emelia Reynolds with Georgia White who seemed to have a lot more personality although she was slightly more arrogant to her detriment in leadership debates. Pierre also appeared arrogant in many TV interviews and failed to introduce new policies to win back fleeing Liberal voters.

For policies, the Socialists promised a continuation of the status quo and relative stability, and promise of slight education reform to remove barriers set by the High Kingdoms constitution. The Socialists also promised to confront the immigration system with a proper and needed reform, and tackle environmental issues as promised by their coalition with the Greens. The Greens too promised environmental issues through debate and work in coalitions. The Greens wanted to approach environmental more globally by promising to meet leaders of major nations such as Ceironia and Fazar to discuss the setting of targets to eliminate major carbon footprints and move to more renewable energy. The Liberals promised a move away from stagnant economic growth into an age of prosperity fuelled by a more free market economy through reduced regulations on major industries. He proposed the privatisation of major firms to create competition to lower prices and increase innovation. He also promised the investment of other major HKA industries such as the tech industry to bring Empherias up to par with Ahitereira on the number of factories outputting technology products. The Conservatives' main policy for the election was a great and satisfying conclusion to immigration reform going for a hard line approach to let only educated peoples in, particularly those from major Alaxian nations such as Azyeri, Ginsukyo, Ceironia and Hvede. They also promised to aid any possible coalition partners in reform to the prison and education systems to increase grade boundaries for universities and make final year exams harder. The Centrists juggled a lot of approaches to a mild extent. They agreed with the push for environmentalism but kept it within Empherias and with minimal investment into renewable energy. They wanted to increase GDP growth but didn't want to invest or privatise quickly to avoid disruption of the economy such as through high unemployment or high inflation.

There were no major scandals during the term that impacted any party in the long term.

The decrease in the popularity of the immigration issue negatively affected the Conservative campaign, and many immigrant voters moved away from the right-wing in general fearing a Liberal-Conservative coalition that could inadvertently make immigration harder. Many leftist newspapers accused the right of wanting to reform the prison system to disproportionally affect skaven and dwarven people, which drastically decreased Conservative support amongst them. Some Ankrankists accused the Conservatives of attempted genocide and said that any Liberal coalition with the Conservatives in the event of a hung parliament would be a political suicide note.

Overview
Regional votes

Shifts in demographics

Late polling data

Scandals during the campaign

Analysis
Indepth changes to the result

Sideways parliament bar chart

Parliament chart (flourish)

bicumeral chart

Indepth result table

MPs who lost their set, MPs who gained their sets

Changes to government