Category: Elections ’08

The timing of yesterday’s post was fitting to say the least as Slovenes will vote on a referendum on regions on Sunday. The logic of this particular referendum (or rather: the lack it) have been detailed here, here and especially here. But just to give you a slightly better picture of what had happened: The government was hell-bent on holding this referendum, because initially regional legislation failed to get parliamentary approval (tough luck – the legislation requires 2/3 majority and the coalition is nowhere near that number) and it desperately needs at least one major political scoop.

Mayor Janković calls for a boycott. Pengovsky diagrees (source)

But instead of giving a clear-cut question such as “are you in favour of creating (insert number) regions named (insert region names), each encompasing the following municipalities (insert municipalities) respectively“, the government opted to arbitrarily create some 13 “referendum areas” (which are to become regions), each with a different question concerning that particular region and nothing else.

So what we will be faced with on Sunday, will be a combination of 13 distinct referendum questions (plus two questions on region names) and – consequently – a zillion ways to twist and turn the results according to the government’s needs. But before we go there, let’s have a look at referendums in Slovenia

Mechanics of a referendum

The referendum is of a consultative nature, meaning that the result will have little or no legal cosequences. It would, however, be a political guideline for decisions pertaining the formation of regions. There is no census on the turnout, so technically, three people can vote and if two of them vote the same way, the referendum is passed. In Slovenia truth is often stranger than fiction and so it often happened that a very small number of people came to vote (traditonally, referendum turnout was about 30%), and so a mere 15% of the voters (the majority of the atendees) decided the referendum result. And finally, the result is calculated as a percentage of all valid votes, rendering the option of casting a blank ballot irrelevant, as a blank ballot will not be counted as a valid vote. This is an important deviation from the electoral legislation, where every ballot is counted, even those that are invalid, meaning that in elections you can cast an empty ballot and it will count in the 100% of the vote cast.

To give you an example, imagine a scenario with 100 voters, which vote both on a referendum and in elections. In both cases you only have to options (A and B) and 40 voters support option A, 30 support option B, while 30 cast an empty or otherwise invalid ballot. In an election, where all 100 votes cast count, the result would be 40% for option A and 30% for option B. In a referendum, however, option A would have received 57,15 % of the vote, and option B 42,85 % as only 70 votes would have counted.

Legitimacy of a referendum

Now, despite all the shortcomings, such a referenum is perfectly legal and legitimate. The question was asked and the people will vote. Or won’t. Those who will choose not to will have willingly put their fate in the hands of others. Which is not something you really want to do in a democracy, so attending a referendum (or any other vote, for that matter) is crucial if you want your policital actions and convictions to have at least some sort of effect on the way your country is ran.

When mathematics is in play I’m not the fastest of cats at the best of times (as proven on this blog on a number of occasions), but even I realise that under such rules of the game your decision not to vote means that you’ve actually cast two votes supporting the option you would not have supported anyhow.

Take our options A and B. You seriously don’t like option B, but couldn’t give a pair of fetid dingo’s kindeys about option A (or – as is mostly the case – you are convinced your vote doesn’t matter). Now: by not voting at all, you’ve not only substracted one vote from the total number of valid votes, but have also increased the number of votes for option B relative to the total number of votes

Reffering back to our example of a hundred votes (and a projected 30 percent turnout), this means that out of a hundred voters only 30 cast their vote. Say 12 of those support option A and 18 support option B. In this case option B (the one you really don’t like) gets 60 % of the vote, whereas option A loses with 40%. Just because you couldn’t be bothered to cast your vote.

Informed decisions

In comments to yesterday’s post Alex maintained that “referendums are never legitimate since people elect their representatives to make informed decisions on their behalf.”

This statement implies two notions which are in my opinion radically wrong. 1) If our elected leaders were to make informed decisions, the voters would have to make informed decision about electing their representatives. Since today’s democracy is based on soundbites, good looks populism and occasional wit, informed decisions are few and far between and even if they exist, they are subject to media interpretation and even manipulation. And 2) this statement implies that our elected representatives are an informed bunch of highly intelligent people who constantly ponder the big picture and the future of the country, even at their personal peril. Right…

Referendums are no more and no less legitimate than any decision by the parliament or other representative body. In either case the decision must be both respected and subject to the mechanism of checks and balances.

This Sunday

Now, how does all of this translate to Slovenia? As noted in the begining, the government of Janez Janša has done pretty much everything to muddle the referendum. 13 distinct question (and two more) allow for no less than four hundred and fifty different combinations of results, according to the head of State Electoral Commission. Naturally, this was done intentionally and it shows that the government is far from certain of getting an overall positive result.

Sunday’s referendum is a slightly expensive introduction into an extremely bloody election campaign. How can I tell? By the fact that to date there has been no “referendum campaign”. Coalition parties – the very same which have called the referendum – have not posted a single banner, not a single second of airwaves was saturated with ads opposing or supporting the referendum question – nothing. Period. The fun will begin after the votes are in, as the battle for result interpretation will begin. Depending on the result, the government will either claim that the referendum was a success because a) most voters per region supported it, b) most voters nation-wide supported it or c) the referendum succeeded in enough regions to make it impossible to draw regions any other way. The opposition will naturally claim exactly the opposite.

Me? I will vote “no”. I think the only fair way to do it would be to ask every one about every region. Do I get a say on whether Primorska should be a single region or not? Should Koroška exist and is Central Slovenia a region or should it be split into Gorenjska and Dolenjska? I think I ought to have a say about it, because it does concern me. Not only from taxpayer’s point of view (where have my euros gone to?) but also because regions totaly redefine a way different levels of government communicate with citizens and because the government is putting yet another layer of authority between itself and the citizens. And finally, because I hate the fact that the one of the main aims of regions is creating refuges for politicians whose due-date is long past or (even worse) who shouldn’t ever have set foot in politics in the first place.

As odd as it may seem, PM Janez Janša and pengovsky agree on one thing. It is vital to get out the vote. Naturally we’re doing it for different reasons, but if the referendum itself is wrong, Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković is even more wrong. He called for a boycott of the referendum, calling it a farce. Yes, it is a farce, and it will be held in three days. And if we all just sit on our asses and do nothing, the farce will become a reality (even more than it already is) and those who will remain at home will have no right to bitch about it afterwards.

If you’re eligible and either support regions or oppose them – get out there and vote on Sunday.

The Prez yesterday signed an order declaring parliamentary elections are to be held on Sunday, September 21st. While the date is not all that suprising – elections must be held no earlier than 60 days before the end of the four-year-term of the Parliament and no later than fifteen days before – it is the last possible date for elections due to the fact that post-election procedures must be completed before the current parliament’s term ends on October 23rd. after – it is a slight deviation from the usual interval od early October to mid-November. In 2004 elections were held on October 3rd, four years before on October 15th.

Contrary to the deleted text it turned out this morning that the September date is the normal order of things, since every election cycle the elections were held some 10-12 days prior to the previous election date, with the sole aim of the new Parliament convening before the previous Parliament’s term ends, thus insuring a smooth transition from one parliament to the other without any constitutional hickups such as a non-existing parliament. As a result, this year’s elections are being held in summer already.

This is how it looked like:

The efects of having 21 september as Election Day are many. For starters, it means that what is promising to be a heated, bloody and viscious campaing with a lot punches below the belt will be over by the time the sun is still high up in the sky and that the proverbial “Hot Political Autumn” (a classic of Slovene journailsm) will actually be a Long Hot Summer, as the campaign will officialy start on August 21st, just at people will slowly start returning from the holidays and start worrying about getting their kids all the school gear necesary and will end on the last day of summer.

Secondly, moving up the election schedule means that the government will have a little less time to bask in the glory of the EU presidency, which admittedly turned sour late in the game on the account of the Irish no (a post on this was scheduled for today, but is rescheduled for tommorow). Alternatively, if things went really bad for the government – a bursting real-estate bubble, increasing oil prices, incompetent ministers, – having elections a week or two earlier might be a good thing, as it will considerably shorten the time-frame avaliable to the opposition for attakcing the government.

And thirdly, Borut Pahor will have a nice natural tan he’ll be working on entire summer.

So, there you have it. The date is set, the clock is ticking (on this blog as well, see the sidebar) and the intricacies of Slovene electoral system will be exlpained in one of the upcoming posts.

And finallly, a couple of matching videos: Long Hot Summer starring Paul Newman and Election Day by Arcadia

EDIT: It turns out that I’m not the only one who cannot the grip of electoral date mathematics 😀 Todays’s Dnevnik ran a story whose title reads “85 days till elections“. As you can see on your left, elections are due in ninety-six days 😉

After a bit of a lull we have had a couple of new polls these past few days, when pengovsky was busy writing up the cultural clash. So what’s the score? Not all that suprising and on the whole things are not changing all that much. Pahor’s Social Democrats are still leading the polls and Janša’s ruling SDS is still unable to close the gap although it came close a couple of times. Careful observers will notice that percentages of some parties in certain polls vary wildly from their usual pattern, but do not be alarmed – we’ll discus it in one of the future posts, although I think you can pretty much find an explanation by yourselves. What is interesting, is the fact both parties seem to have entered an obivous downward trend…

…but this might change in the near future, as the right wing parties reached for some heavy artiliery today and convened a special session of the parliament, where they will debate some of the more controversial MBOs this country has seen in the last couple of years. Laško Brewery tops the list, naturally, followed closely by Istrabenz and Merkur as well as Terme Čatež, where an MBO is still underway. The list is very selective however, and while the coalition MPs will most likely spit fire and sulphur especially at Boško Šrot, the opposition will probably admit in passing that errors have been done in the past but claim that it is this government which enabled takeovers the size of Istrabenz and Laško, worth somewhere in the vicinity of one and two bilion euros respectively.

The session will obviously achieve nothing and is only convened because coalition parties are turning to their old and proven tricks. Namely: exactly four years ago, Janez Janša, then leader of the opposition, convened a special session of the parliament, where he sucessfully took appart the doings of the LDS-led government and its PM Tone Rop (now of Pahor’s SD). Well it wasn’t so much Janša’s sucess as it was a failure on Rop’s part who just wasn’t prepared and did play his cards right. And so Janša & Co. are doing it again, playing victim once more, although they are the ones in power, although it is true that at times they seem powerless to do anything. But we can put that down to incompetence rather than lack of power.

On the other hand, the opposition is not helped by the fact that Boško Šrot is having problems at Delo. Apparently he is having Janez Markeš, Delo’s Editor-in-Chief, replaced as of today. The unofficial version is that Markeš leaned Delo too much in the direction of Zares while Boško Šrot wants his newspaper to be more in favour of Pahor’s Social Democrats. Despite the fact that they usually describe the two parties as offsprings of the same political father (Milan Kučan, naturarlly), the right was quick to use this information, claiming that the opposition controls the media. The trick of course is, that opposition by definition cannot control the media (the latter can, however, be pro-opposition), but at the same time the government by definition must not control the media (which is exactly what this government had done until Janša-Šrot split).

However, I wouldn’t put it past Boško Šrot to say something like “stop supporting Golobič and back Pahor, or else…”. The man had several fits of megalomania recently, the last and most innapropriate being the one where he refused to attend the session of the Commerce Committee where he would be able to explain his view of Laško-Delo-Mercator deal with Janša. Instead, Šrot said that he would only address the plenary session of the parliament…. Err… What? Waddayoumean address the plenary session? Even the Prez must ask permission to address the Parliament, while you’d like to do it at your convenience? No go, Boško…

Anyway – Šrot is replacing Markeš, but my bet is that everyone involved in Delo takover now wants a share of the goodies and it suddenly turned out that the cake just ain’t big enough. Birdies from Delo, however, in part corroborate the story about Zares/SD switch.

It’s been over a month since last poll was published and pengovsky was already starting to wonder where have all the polls(ters) gone, Ninamedia comes to the rescue. Sort of, anyway. Results in a nutshell: Social Democrats seem to have bounced back, SDS stopped its dive, while Lipa, SLS and NSi should perhaps start to worry.

Things are, naturally, not so simple. The past month has seen a flurry of activity spread over a number of fields. On one hand we have had what is becoming known as “tycoon takeovers”, including but not limited to takeovers of Laško Brewery (new owner Boško Šrot) and Istrabenz (new owner Igor Bavčar). On the other hand, we have regional legislation which promises to be a whole new pre-election front, as results of referenda will probably be anything but clear and finally, there’s the Patria arms affair (not extensively covered on this blog, but that might change in the future as its political rammifications are getting more and more clear.

REGIONS

We’ve covered that on more than one ocassion, but events of the past week showed that the government is intent on pushing regional legislation through no matter what. To this effect it had the parliament call a referendum on the issue. However, to get his way, Prime Minister Janez Janša had to ensure that at least two out of four DeSUS MPs vote in favour of ther referendum. Which in the end they did, but only after Janša promised additional 35 million euros for pensions. 17.5 mil a vote – not a bad deal, eh? So while the people are being fed yet another referendum (expect a turnout of about 30%, no more), DeSUS is making headlines on home ground. But not to overdo DeSUS angle too much (although we’ll get back to it), it must be said that the opposition had the good sense of scrapping another referendum which was to be held only a week after the one on regions.

You probably don’t know it, but in its anti-corruption drive this government decided to abolish an independent anticorruption commission and replace it with a coalition-controlled one. I shan’t bother you with details, suffice it to say that it’s personal between Drago Kos, head of the doomed commission and PM Janša. In any case, the anticorruption commision is to be no more and while the opposition tried to have this referendum held on the same day as the regional one (which would have made sense). But as this is not possible, the anticorruption commission is to be no more at least temporarily. Which brings us to…

TYCOONS

Now that Boško Šrot confirmed what we all knew for a long time – that he is more or less the sole owner of Laško Brewery, he recevied a lot of bad press (not that he can’t afford it 😉 ). He became the textbook definition of corruption and centre of attention of the rediscovered anti-corruption drive of the ruling party.There are several problems with that picture, which – it seems – reflect on the polls as well:

Boško Šrot already made it clear that he made his moves in agreement with Janez Janša and that the two fell out only after Janša’s people started seriously mishandling Delo newspaper (the latter was part of the deal). This fact naturally did not go unnoticed by the public, especially when Igor Bavčar, Janša’s long time friend and CEO of Istrabenz, who took over his company in a similar manner. Not that the two are the only ones to have officially gotten filthy rich in the past couple of years. It is becoming more and more apparent that – willingly or unwillingly, but definitely contrary to preelection promises – Janša & Co. made it possible for a handful of people to continue ammasing wealth at an ever increasing pace.

ARMS DEALINGS

Back to DeSUS and its president Karel Erjavec who just happens to be defence minister as well (what defence and pensions have in common other than “defending pensions” is way beyond me). In any case, under his tenure the ministry went about shopping for brand new heavy armoured vehicles and the 135 million deal ultimately went to Finnish Patria. Only to see questions being raised about what exactly Slovenian Army will get for this kind of money and ultimately whether or not people were bribed to secure the deal. At the moment there is at least one person in the cooler in Finland over it (whether or not charges will be pressed remains to be seen).

For a while it seemed that DeSUS’ president is in over his head but as the story drags on, more and more people from Janša’s immediate vicinity are popping up and that does little good to Janša’s ratings.

So after month-long break is seems that the right bloc managed to cut its losses, but failed to make any gains, while the left bloc (especially Pahor’s SD made at least some headway).

Pengovsky’s projection: Seeing the aftermath of these events will be interesting to say the least. However, right now the ruling coalition seems to have failed to grab the initiative. But PM Janša went on the record saying that he has little time to dwell on home issues, so one assumes that the balance of power will change dramatically when the Slovenia finishes its EU presidency on 31 June and PM Janša re-engages on home terrain with full force. Whether or not it will be soon enough and whether or not the referendum on regions will be boost his preelection campaing or whether it will backfire will be seen in about a month.

Slovenian parliament yesterday passed a motion to hold a referendum on establishing regions in Slovenia. Those who frequent this blog on a regular basis might remember this post, detaliing the why’s and for’s of pa policy fiasco that is the legislation on regions. Although the legislation, proposed by the government of Prime Ministger Janez Janša suffered a resounding defeat, Janša (not unlike Hillary Clinton) refuses to admit defeat. Which – in all honesty – is understandable.

14-regions version of Slovenia (source)

Afterall, this is an election year and given all the rush to fulfil those pre-election promises given four years ago, regions are not to be overlooked. Did I say “a rush to fulfil pre-elections promises? Please read “a rush to create the appearance of trying to fulfil pre-election promises but that stupid opposition is so intent on grabbing the power that they’ll do anything even block projects that are in the national interest“.

Just to make it clear: Creating a regional level of government is not an easy task, especially since there is little or no precedent on which to build a political and social consensus. To create such a system, the following changes in the political and legislative system are necesary (off the top of my head):

– constitutional ammendments (absolute 2/3 majority needed)
– law defining the regions and their powers (possibly a normal 2/3 majority needed)
– law on regional elections (possibly a normal 2/3 majority needed)
– ammending the law on municipalities (a normal majority needed),
– ammending various general and specific laws, transferring powers from state and municipalites to regions (a normal majority
  needed)

This is not something you go about six… no… five months before elections. But since it already crashed and burned in the parliament, it is trying to cover its back by calling a referendum (possibly referenda) on regions, to be held on June 22 (a month from now). Mind you, the results of this vote will not be binding (the finer point of Slovenian referendum legislation will be discussed here at a later date).

Obviously the government aims to get some sort of a positive result and shift the blame on the opposition for failing to provide the necesary votes to achieve the 2/3 majority. Which would be all fine and dandy if it were not for the small fact that even the coalition parties cannot agree on the number of future regions. SDS and SLS are (once for a change) advocating 13 regions plus special powers for capital city, NSi wants only six regions, whereas DeSUS (the reqular pain in JJ’s ass) thinks regions aren’t necesary in the first place.

So everything now depends on the exact nature of the referendum question and the way the referendum will be held. There are a couple of different way to go about it. Allow me to elucidate with refferences to specifics:

1. You hold only one referendum with a question along the lines of Do you support creation of regions in Slovenia

This is the safe way to do it. The question is as vague as possible and will probably yield a positive result. The problem is that most parties (and people) already agree on this, rendering this option useless and making it just one more way to throw 2,5 milion euros (approximate costs of a referendum in Slovenia) out the windown

2. You hold only one referdum, but you detail specific regions in the question

This is probably the politically acceptable way to do it. It would require some sort of minimal agreement on the number of regions and their names, leaving their exact borders up to later legislation. The trick of course is that there is no agreement on the number of regions.

3. You arbitrarily create several “referendum areas”, which are loosely modeled after the regions and ask people in those areas if they support the creation of their respective regions. Again, this would require some sort of agreement of the number of regions, but his option leaves more room for maneuvering as some referenda can suceed and others can fail, giving the government to join and split future regions almost at will, but still claim to execute the will of the people.

The propper way would of course be not to hold a referendum at all. Or hold it together with parliamentary elections. But I strongly suspect that no party would risk making regions the focal point of this elections. There’s too much at stake. At least, everyone agrees on that. 😀

As this year’s election campaign in Slovenia slowly shifts into second gear, cracks are appearing in the structure of the Slovene political left – which was never of a particularly strong construction to begin with. Now, it is a generally accepted fact that in almost any more or less developed democracy parties of the political left are prone to internal bickering and in-fighting. This is nowhere more true than in Slovenia where there tales of people crossing the road to avoid meeting other people from the same political bloc are legendary (this is – or at least was – especially true of the various leftist think-tanks where theoretichal disagreements often turn into personal animosities).

The Trio From The Left Bloc(k) (source)

However, this modus operandi is fast becoming obvious to the general public as well. It seems that the three leaders of the left bloc, Borut Pahor, Katarina Kresal and Gregor Golobič, of Social Democrats, LDS and Zares respectively are cautious (to say the least) about forging a pre-election coalition, much to the annoyance of former President Milan Kučan, who days ago publicly placed a rhetorical question, why is it so hard to say that certain parties are politicaly more compatible than others – a very clear signal that Milan Kučan, the living legend of the Slovene political left and a powerul figure in his own right, thinks that the left bloc should state its intentions loudly, clearly and transparently.

Contrary to what some perhaps expected, Kučan’s call recevied a muted responce by the three leaders. And for a good reason, it would seem. There are a couple of factors which make forging closer ties between SD, LDS and Zares not the brightest of ideas. At the moment at least.

Firstly, there’s the issue of disintegration LDS. Fact of the matter is that many of LDS’s former bretheren found their new home just around the corner (so to speak) in SD and Zares and embracing them as partners shortly after they skeddadled as party members would not go down well with a big part of LDS membership. Not that LDS is in any position to dictate terms at the moment, as it is still leaking members to other parties.

For precisely the same reasons – just put the other way around – Zares is not all that keen on marrying LDS. I mean, they’ve just gone through a very messy and a very public divorce and now they are to shack up together again? No way! Besides, Zares has nothing to lose one way or another. It’s making it across the 4 percent vote treshold and into the parliament is almost a given and perhaps they’d be even better of in the opposition for their first “true” term as a parliamentary party. Gregor Golobič said so less than six months ago and has since then only once mentioned the possibility of Zares going all the way to the top (i.e.: being a member of the ruling coalition).

And finally, Borut Pahor is doing everything possible to show that he is not Kučan’s puppet, even to the point of picking fights fith the former Prez where none are necesary. When Kučan went on the record saying that it is not a given that Borut Pahor will be the next prime minister, the latter responded by saying that will not make way for anyone who might be “chosen behind the scenes” to run the country. The force of Pahor’s responce was quite disproportionate to Kučan’s remark, which speaks of at least two things:

One: Social Democrats are not on as strong a footing as they would have us believe (and Pahor knows it) – were he totally sure of his position, Pahor would have let Kučan’s remark slide or even embrace it (something along the lines of: “of course it is not a given. It is for the people to decide”. Instead he took it as a direct challenge and responded in kind.

and

Two: Borut Pahor is very much haunted by political shadows. He distances himself from Milan Kučan, but knows that Kučan’s support will be one the key elements in gaining that final push which would propel him to the top job. In short, he wants to have the cake and eat it. At the very least he wants Kučan not to support any of the other two parties in the left bloc. The other two parties are of course hoping he will do just that.

There is however one more shadow that haunts all three parties. It takes the form of Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković who is punching way above his weight at the moment. It seems that everyone recognises him as a sort of a king-maker and is keen on pleasing him. This is why Zoki can get away with almost anything. Even the fact that he will – watch this – summon all three opposition parties to the City Hall and demand to see what their policies towards Ljubljana will be – and only then will he announce his support for a particular party – if any. Ballsy.

So while Social Democrats, LDS and Zares are avoiding becoming to comfy with each other, trying to please Zoran Janković and running circles around Milan Kučan, elections are approaching. But recent events suggest that the three party leaders may have opted for the right tactic and that it is Milan Kučan who excercised some poor judgement this time around.

Namely – presidential elections, held autumn last showed that if there is more than one left-wing candidate in the race, left-leaning voters are slightly more likely to actually turn up at the polling station. So three slightly different platforms might on the whole draw more left wing vote than one unified (and- by exention – watered down) political platform of a single bloc.

Secondly – having three independent and only loosely connected parties attacking the ruling coalition gives prime minister Janez Janša three political enemies to worry about (plus Milan Kučan, plus Zoran Janković, plus Karel Erjavec of DeSUS and Bojan Šrot of SLS- even though the latter two are formally coalition members.) and makes matters infinitely more complicated from his point of view. It the three parties were to stand as a unified bloc, PM Janša would only have to focus on one person or issue, immediately putting the supposedly stronger bloc on the defensive.

And finally – the way things stand now, the ever more apparent cracks, bickering and in-fightings are actually streghts, which would immediately turn into weaknesses if any sort of a unified political alliance between the three parties would be announced. The latter would require a single leadership, a single platform and a single voice and none of the three parties are prepared to give way to any of the other two – and the possibility of an outside man becoming leader of the bloc was immediately rejected by Borut Pahor. Whether or not Katarina Kresal and Gregor Golobič share the sentiment is not known (I’d even venture to say that the latter would welcome an outside man as a leader – he’s done it before, you know), but this option is off the table for the moment, at least.

I realize that Slovenian elections may be of little to no interest to anyone but me and some other hard core freaks. But thought it’d be a kindda neat thing to do, so I created a badge representing the latest poll results in the ongoing election campaign.

The badge will only display the data for the decided vote and will for the moment be based on the assumption that SD, LDS and Zares will form an opposition (left wing) bloc while SDS, NSi, SLS and DeSUS will continue in their existion coalition and will be joined by SNS. Lipa, for the moment, remains out there somewhere.I realise it’s kinnda nerdy, but if you like, you can put the badge on your blog/site as well by copy/pasting the following code

 
<a href="https://www.pengovsky.com/category/elections-08/">
<img border="0" src="https://www.pengovsky.com/sloelec2008.png" /></a> 

Badge is 180 pixels in width and 235 pixels in height and will change every time I publish results of a new poll to reflect the latest numbers. Depending on coalition relationships the compostition of both blocs may also change as may the graphics itself. But the dimensions will remain the same.