Peru results

Ollanta Humala, image from peru.com

Exit polls showed Ollanta Humala (the left-wing candidate) beating Keiko Fujimori 52-48. A provisional count of the actual ballots seems a little tighter, but a still with a Humala win outside the 95% confidence interval.

It's not officially been confirmed by the electoral commission and nor has Keiko congratulated her opponent (as far as I can tell), but Humala's giving a victory speech and it'd be a major upset if anything changed now.

(Quick tip for reading Google-Translated coverage: Humala's party is called Gana Peru, literally "Peru Winning". This is why you see sentences like "Humala leader of Ghana and Peru" or "Winning Peru wins".)

Gana Peru already had a plurality in the parliament; if he also gets the support of the liberal Peru Possible party, then he'll have a majority. By all accounts he should, because PP's leader (former president Toledo) endorsed him before the election. It seems likely that Humala will be able to to deliver on his promises.

What he will have to do is play it cool if he wants to keep businessmen and foreign investors from freaking out. Here's hoping he's more of a Morales than a Chavez; if Hugo calls to congratulate him and invite him up to Caracas for a victory lap, Ollanta might be well advised to demur.

Macedonia results

Image from Reuters

The ruling (centre-right) government in Macedonia has declared victory: it looks like they're on about 39% to the oppositions 32%.

The last time around (2009) it was 55% to 15%, so clearly there has been a major swing to the opposition. Quite a lot of it seems to have come late, though as far as I can tell the polling was never very good.

The government will now go from being majority to bringing in a coalition partner. Since they hate each other with a fiery passion, that probably won't be the Social Democrats- everyone seems to agree that it's most likely one of the parties that cater specifically to ethnic Albanians. The second-largest Albanian party has been in coalition with the government before, but it might not be big enough to get the coalition over the 50% line.

So the Social Democrats massively improved their score, the Albanians hold a lot of cards in government formation, and the Conservative Nikola Greuvski gets to stay prime minister. It's been said that the last election in the UK was one that every party lost, but this looks like one where everybody won.

Portugal Results

Image from Internal Ministry results page

Well, much as expected: the centre-right PSD (remember, think of them as the moderate half of the Conservatives and the free-market half of the Lib Dems) has come out first. The Socialists have sagged a bit more than expected, so I really doubt that anyone but Coelho will make it to the PM's chair.

The PSD are probably close enough to run as a minority government. Alternatively, they might bring in the Popular Party as a coalition partner.

Edit: Just to clarify, these are provisional results with abut half the precincts reporting: the percentages will probably shift a bit overnight.