Gay Marriage in Sweden

The Local

The Moderate Party, the leading party in the current conservative government, has decided to support gay marriage in Sweden. There have been few calls for gay marriage because same-sex couples already have many of the same rights and protections of heterosexual couples. The reason for this willingness to change the status quo may be the fact that socialist coalition has been leading in recent polls by as much as 15%. This leaves the Christian Democrats the only party in the Riksdag to oppose gay marriage.

Zombies!

Fido

One of the most creative movie premises I've seen in awhile. I don't know if that's a good thing.

Name Trends Update

Social Security Online

Apparently I had been misinformed back in January that they would update the popular baby names list in February as apparently it wasn't updated until May. Anyway, here's how my predictions held up.

Alexander didn't make it into the top 10, maintaining its position at 12th.

Joseph was instead replaced by William.

Sophia made it to the top 10, but Mia only made it to 13th, still a strong sign in growing popularity as it was 17th in 2005.

Ashley fell out of the top 10, Samantha fell to 10th.

Ava continued its strong rise, going from 9th to 5th.

Joseph and Micheal did not switch positions.

So I'd say I got about 50/50 on that, maybe slightly less because I didn't think William would return to the top 10.

On the Subject of Elections

Elections Ireland

Ireland uses one of the most accurate, but mind-numbingly tedious methods of counting votes, Single transferable vote. Basically, everyone ranks the candidates and if one's favorite gets eliminated for having the fewest votes that round, then the vote goes to the second favorite candidate. This is done until all the seats are filled. Click on one of the constituencies in the first link to see an in-depth look at the voting system. It is amazing.

Belated French Election Update

So I never got around to updating my readers on how my prediction held up. Well, I currently predicted that the department that Bayrou originally won in and one other would shift in favor of Royal. Along with this, four other departments in which Sarkozy was originally the top candidate, switched to Royal.

Not heeding Le Pen's call to boycott, voter turnout went up during the second round, from 83.77% to 83.97%, although, the number of spoilt or null votes tripled, so the number of votes actually counted dropped.

In the end, in appears that Bayrou voters split 50.64/49.36 in favor of Royal. So the 50/50 split prediction seems to have been fairly accurate. The slight boost to Royal didn't do her much good though, she still lost.