Election day!!!

The voting booths are closed ... now. o_O

OMG I am so nervous!! I feel like I have no earthly idea how this is going to go. Fingers crossed for the red & green side ... !!

They just revealed the exit poll and the result is extremely even, 86 seats to the left and 83 to the right. Labor significantly bigger than Frp. Whew. :-) That's one of my biggest fears, that they - or, slightly better, the right generally - will manage some unprecedented landslide. I don't think they will, I've never thought so, but it's like a nightmare that I can't quite shake. One thing this election will make clear once and for all, namely, just how stupid Norwegians really are.

Anyway ... I'm glued to the TV screen now, and I will be all night. No way am I going to bed until I know what's what here. :-) I voted on my way home this afternoon (I've worked a shift at Friends) and I was so confused, as I stood in the booth I hardly knew what to do. What I felt - still feel - is that the number one priority has got to be to make Labor as big as they can possibly get. They're like the levee holding back the flood. :-) On the other hand, oil drilling in Lofoten and Vesterålen (ie a very important and potentially fragile coastal area up north, for the foreigners reading this) is an extremely important issue to me. I'm against it, obviously. So theoretically I ought to vote for the Socialist Left (SV) because they're the one party of any significance that are really standing up against that. Also, in all the test-your-vote thingummies on line I've ended up with them. (All except one, which thought I ought to vote for the Center Party. Dream on, wolfkillers.) But then again they have disappointed me in government this term ... and, more importantly, I'm worried that they'll do quite badly this year and won't be in a position to actually do anything. But that's of course a vicious circle, because of course they'll do badly if everyone thinks like me ... !! Aargh ... !

Anyway. My mother voted for SV because she also thinks the oil project is so important and she thinks we should all do what we can to support SV. But again I think we need Labor as big as possible. Because even though they haven't said whether they will drill or not - they want to do the research, and so do most of Parliament generally, before they decide - one thing that's for damn sure is that we've got to keep a government from the left, because the right will just drill, baby, drill. So I feel like I should basically support the carrying wall first and foremost. Then again, I have been seeing all those flyers and what not all over the place saying that Red Alliance needed only 659 votes, or whatever, here in Oslo to get Erling Folkvord into Parliament. And hey, yeah, I definitely would like to see Folkvord in Parliament. Argh ...

But of course I didn't vote for Red Alliance, hello. I'm not crazy. I ended up going with Labor. But I'm still not sure whether I did the right thing. Oh, me so nervous ... !! The exit poll doesn't tell me anything much, this could go absolutely any which way. And it's been what, 26 years since an incumbent government has won an election. (Evidence that Norwegians are pretty dang stupid, alas.) So even though it looks good for the left right now, who knows??

This is definitely what you'd call an election thriller. Even if the campaign has been painfully boring. There was a little debate on NRK just now about what issue has been dominant in this campaign, and they decided on none ... you know, like the campaign in such a year was the environment campaign, in such a year it was the jobs campaign, etc ... because one issue was very dominant. They decided there had been no such issue this year. But in fact there was. The issue dominating this year's election campaign has been WHINING. >:-(

What we should have talked about, what the politicians should have talked about - or at least the ones on the left; the right side of course want to keep this out of the debate - is the fact that this election is about basically a choice between systems. Do we want our tried and tested social democratic system that isn't perfect but actually works pretty fucking well (people in this country seem to be barely noticing the credit crunch!!) or do we want, and I apologize in advance to any Americans reading this, an Americanized system which has been proved to work really really badly (to in fact have created that very same financial crisis!). The conservative solutions just don't work. We've seen that this year. So are we still going to choose those solutions?? That's been the big question. Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but I definitely feel like this question has been significantly underemphasized this fall. Unfortunately.

One thing seems obvious, though. The next prime minister of Norway will have a last name that starts with an S and ends with -berg. ;-) (Siv Jensen, eat your cold little heart out.) I have my fingers crossed that that person's first name will be Jens ... but if it turns out to be Erna, I'll still be optimistic, because I don't think there will be a blue wave sweeping the country anytime soon. Whew.

More later, I'm sure ...