The first constituency to announce their results for Thursdays’s general election in Zongongia has been Hundsnes North. Counting will continue over several days throughout the weekend, due to geographical challenges delivering ballot papers from isolated rural stations across the country to their counting locations; combined with religious reasons prohibiting counting throughout the night.
The surprising result from Hundsnes North has seen the seat go to the Republic Now! candidate – a party that did not even exist last election. This, on its own, would be unusual; but this seat has previously been a clear safe seat for Economic Focus, and was not expected to change hands at all. Indeed, the Economic Focus candidate came in a mere third place behind Republic Now! and the Centre Liberal Party, the traditional challenger in the constituency. Results were as follows:
Hundsnes North
Total Votes: 17,345
SALO, Ladja Eir – Republic Now! – 6, 504 (37.5%)
AHLBERG, Poul Belit – Centre Liberal – 3,833 (22.1%)
SÖDERSTRÖM, Marius – Economic Focus – 3,330 (19.2%)
KARLLSON, Nicolas – Communist – 1,536 (8.8%)
ISAKSEN, Aksel – Our Zongongia – 816 (4.7%)
LUNDSTRÖM, Torunn – Social Labour – 587 (3.3%)
LANGE, Milly Liv – Women Rising – 426 (2.4%)
GERHARDSSON, Erland Elias – Green Ecology – 313 (1.8%)
This is likely to signify a great shift in voting patterns, with exit polling showing that all three major parties – Economic Focus, Social Labour, and Centre Liberal – are set to lose seats at this election. But with former safe seat strongholds falling from the very first result, it seems likely that the losses will be even greater than predicted. It is impossible to predict how this election will go.
