2017 Nordal General Election

The 2017 Nordal general election was held on Wednesday 5th of July 2017, with 48,597,968 registered voters. The election took place in all 600 constituencies across Nordal under the first-past-the-post system. The election saw a huge boost for the Alliance party under Jessica Mayor at the expense of the two major parties, gaining 28 seats, the party's biggest increase since the 1977 general election. Despite this, the ruling Conservative Union party still won the most votes and seats and retained its comfortable majority in the House, albeit reduced slightly. This defied many expectations of a hung parliament, mostly due to the surprise under-performance of the Social Labour party under Brian Rennard. Many expected the popular leader of the SLP to gain seats for his party and force a hung parliament, however, due to a lacklustre campaign, an electoral pact headed by the Alliance Party, and the question of electoral reform being dominant in the political sphere at the time, the SLP was forced on the defensive in key heartland constituencies.

This was the first time an electoral pact was agreed in a modern Nordal general election. Alliance, Green Party, Welwyn National Party, Verland Forward, and Mebyon Kurlan all agreed in principle to not field candidates against each other in the hope that this would boost their seat count and force the two biggest political parties to consider electoral reform. This pact was ultimately successful in boosting the seat count of its members with every party gaining at least one of their target seats - with the exception of Mebyon Kurnlan. However, the pact failed at its biggest goal of forcing the main parties to consider electoral reform with the Conservative Union party retaining its majority and committing to FPTP and the Social Labour Party remaining split on the issue. The electoral pact was soon disbanded after the election after the Greens and Welwyn National Party accused Alliance of "using" them to gain seats for themselves.

Background
The election date was set by the Electoral Commission as per the Parliamentary Terms Act 1911.

On the 19th of May, President Zackary Briggs dissolved the House of Commons at the request of Prime Minister David George with political campaigning officially beginning on the 1st of June.

The governing Conservative Union party administration was looking to secure a larger majority for David George to commit to a second term as Prime Minister, hopefully adding to the party's major successes in the 2013 election. In 2016, Prime Minister David George announced his intentions to build on his majority of 46 in order to "get the job done" and lay the foundations for his ambitious constitutional reforms he announced a year earlier. The Social Labour Party was seeking to take back the majority it lost in 2013 and to rebuild its base in the Rye River Valley.

Alliance and the other regional progressive parties as well as the Greens had already come to an agreement with each other to not field candidates in certain constituencies a few months before the election. Alliance was hoping to secure a large enough voter base among disgruntled SLP and tactical Green/regionalist votes in order to force a hung parliament. Knowing they were unlikely to win an outright majority, the leader of Alliance, Jessica Mayor, had hoped to force whichever minority government - in the event of a hung parliament - to commit to an electoral reform plan and ditch first-past-the-post. This pact was widely publicised and commented on by the media drawing a mixed public reaction and resulted in the issue of electoral reform dominating the campaign of both the major parties.

Electoral reform
Electoral reform and the adequacy of first-past-the-post were clear overlying themes of the campaign. The Alliance manifesto, released in January 2017, committed to ending the first-past-the-post system and replacing it with a more proportional system based on the Lindian model. The SLP did not support changing the political system "through legislative means" but was open to the idea of supporting a referendum on the issue in the event of an SLP minority government. While, Alliance leader, Jessica Mayor acknowledged that a referendum was the most probable way to achieve electoral reform, she continued to assert the position that a direct change to the political system through a parliamentary bill was the first priority of her party.

The CUP was largely dismissive of the issue with David George saying in a statement "any change to the electoral system in Nordal would require the entire constitution to be gutted, replaced, and built back up from scratch", suggesting that a proportional system would bring instability to Nordal's relatively young political institutions. Asked whether the CUP would give in to Alliance in order to secure a majority in the event of a hung parliament, he said "no".

While the two major political parties were against direct reform, every other political party in Nordal was in support. The separatist parties, Welwyn National Party, Verland Forward, and Mebyon Kurnlan held joint talks and pledged to campaign in support of a proportional system in the hopes that it would "amplify the separatist vote", as stated by Toby Llyofwyn, the leader of WNP.

Tax and the budget
Tax reform was a major issue within the CUP as well as nationally. The system in place before the election had been critiqued by all parties with the CUP leadership labelling it "inadequate and outdated" in their manifesto. David George had previously attempted to reform the tax system in 2015 but suffered a major parliamentary revolt over the decision to include a clause to the 'Tax Regulation Bill 2015' that would have seen the Church of Nordal start paying property taxes on its vast estates - something all other churches in Nordal had voluntarily been doing since 2003. After this revolt, the government decided to pull the bill without any final vote on the content of the bill.

The 'Tax Regulation Bill 2015' came about due to the need to stop the growing deficit in Nordal's finances. The deficit had grown from ᚱ1.5bn in the first quarter of 2013 to ᚱ7bn in the first quarter of 2015. This was after the CUP broke their 2013 manifesto promise by raising taxes on people earning over ᚱ350,000 annually. Prime Minister David George had categorically ruled out any austerity measures during the previous election and he had been keen to not introduce any recommended budget cuts in the face of public scrutiny. Due to this fact, the Nordalan tabloids labelled him the "Red Unionist", something his critics in the CUP quickly latched onto.

The CUP 2017 manifesto now included a newer version of this bill in its contents, promising to quickly set up an official voluntary religious property tax agency with the promise to relax regulations over property development and land sales. Many in the CUP saw the 2017 CUP manifesto as a "purge" of these critics - highlighting the fact that 3 ex-CUP MPs had been expelled from the party for refusing to campaign on behalf of the new manifesto. However, the majority of the party had supported these new reform measures and the public discourse largely considered the critics irrelevant as highlighted by The Burton Financial Times front-page headline "Sidelines for Unionist Backbencher Critics: David Wins the Party Over".

The opposition parties also campaigned on reform with Alliance pledging to fix the loopholes regarding inheritance tax and campaigning for a Vestean-wide corporation tax to fight tax evasion "on an international level". The SLP campaigned on a promise of a 50% tax on those earning over ᚱ1.5m and a halt to all inheritance tax amnesties with a gradual increase to a 60% inheritance tax by 2030.

Aftermath
At 04:42 with the declaration of Banborough South, it had become clear that David George and the CUP had retained control of the House of Commons, albeit with a reduced popular vote.

The Prime Minister was granted a 4-year term by President Zackary Briggs as per the Fixed Term Elections bill 2004.

Impact of the electoral pact
Many analysts have argued over the impact the Alliance electoral pact had on the outcome of the election. The most agreed-upon analysis indicated that the pact did more to harm the Social Labour Party's vote share than advance the pact's agenda of forcing a hung parliament. This is evident in the pact's gains throughout Welwyn, Kurnlan, and Verland however this explanation does not account for Alliance's rapid gains in SLP seats in Rewland. A combination of the lethargic SLP campaign and disillusionment with the SLP's support for FPTP is the most agreed-upon reason for Alliance's gains in Rewland.

With this in mind, it had been predicted that if the pact were not a factor in the election the outcome would've been a hung parliament. Fred Hoole, campaign advisor to SLP leader Brian Rennard said this: "[The pact] was so large in its ambitions that it essentially acted as a political weight pulling down on the SLP campaign. Door-to-door campaigners for the SLP would constantly be dragged into awkward questions about electoral stability and reform that they simply did not have an answer to; putting the SLP into a position where they either had to directly address a question that they had purposefully been avoiding for so long or to simply ignore it basically paralysed the campaign by making it look reactionary and slow. This combined with Alliance's campaign focusing on activism and local politics masked the CUPs disastrous rollout of their manifesto and issues plaguing their party infighting."