On the Jamaican parliamentary election and the Northern Territory state election

Last week, Jamaica held an early general election (the next elections there were not expected until February 2021) despite the still ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The result was a stunning victory for Jamaican PM Andrew Holness and his Jamaican Labour Party (despite its name, this is actually Jamaica's equivalent of the Conservative Party in practice), who won 49 seats and 57% of the vote, up from 32 seats (a one seat majority) and 50% in 2016. The opposition People's National Party meanwhile won just 14 seats and 42.8% of the vote, and did not win a majority of seats in any Jamaican parish. The largest parish in Jamaica, Saint Andrew (which contains Mr Holness' constituency, Saint Andrew West Central, and opposition leader Peter Phillips' constituency, Saint Andrew East Central), was the only parish where no seats changed hands this year. The JLP and the PNP were the only political parties to contest this year's Jamaican election, and no Independent candidate polled even 100 votes.

One notable statistic of this election is that because of the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, turnout dropped from 48% to 37%, the lowest since 1983 when the main opposition boycotted the elections. It is nevertheless clear that Mr Holness has handled the COVID-19 situation in Jamaica rather well, critical when the pandemic has impacted tourism, on which Jamaica is strongly dependent socioeconomically, so heavily; recovery rates are good and restrictions not particularly significant.

Meanwhile in the Northern Territory in Australia, whose count did not give a conclusive result until last week (the Northern Territory is quintuple the size of Britain geographically but has fewer people than the city of Nottingham, making counting of AV ballots very slow), Labor held on although with a majority of only 3; however with only 25 seats in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly a majority of 3 is actually rather significant. The Country Liberals, having been decimated at the 2016 election, made a noticeable recovery to 8 seats, with their most notable gain being the division of Barkly, which had been Labor since 1990, and recovering safe Country Liberal Territory they had never previously lost  The Territory Alliance, formed from two Independent MPs and one Labor MP, failed to make the impact it expected, with only Robyn Lambley holding her division of Araluen, which she held as an Independent in 2016 and she was originally elected there as a Country Liberal (the NT Liberal branch). The two Independents, Kezia Purick and Yingiya Mark Guyula, held their seats, with Mr Guyula easily seeing off an attempt by Lynne Walker to recapture her old division, mainly due to the Country Liberals and Territory Alliance standing aside for him tactically. The local Greens could not even finish second anywhere in the Northern Territory, even though it is well known that the climate crisis will impact on rural areas much more than urban areas; their best results were in the Darwin suburbs of Johnston and Nightcliff with 17.2% and 18.6% respectively. 

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