2015 Urcean political realignment

The 2015 Urcean political realignment was a series of events that lead to the 2035 Procuratorial and Daoni elections in Urcea becoming a realigning election, dissolving the two-party duopoly that had existed in Urcea since the end of the Red Interregnum.

Background

The National Democratic Party was formed out of a coalition of non-partisan reform-minded politicians aligned with Gréagóir FitzRex elected to the Concilium Daoni in 1895. These politicians, in line with their patron, promoted policies of nationalization, modernization, and rational reforms to the state administration while proposing policies aimed at addressing social ills using public funds. The Party remained legal by defecting to the legitimists just prior to the restoration, and in 1905 they won a majority in the Concilium Daoni. The party's moderate reform-minded attitude placed them in the center of Urcean political life, opposed on the right by the National Pact and to the left by a myriad of small parties during the Great War period. In 1960, concerns over the growing prevalence of neoliberalism in the National Pact lead to the formation of a fracture Liberal Party, which found itself on the center-left of the spectrum. The National Democratic Party and Liberal Party often collaborated over the next several decades, and in 2011 the two parties formed a governing coalition in the Concilium Daoni. The Liberal Party, which had assumed a left-wing character, nonetheless identified with the general direction the NDP was steering the country. Prior to the 2020 election, the two parties decided to merge together in a permanent arrangement. The National Democratic Party and Liberal Party formed the National Social Union in 2019, and won majorities in the Concilium Daoni in 2020, 2025, and 2030. Dissident minorities from the Liberal Party formed the Democratic Labor Party rather than joining the centrist distributist National Social Union. The architect of the merger, Procurator Michael Witte, continued to lead the new party in the Daoni until 2029, when he stepped down in favor of his protege, James Cossus Reed.

Outcome

As a result of the realignment, the coalition that made the National Social Union a viable political party were no longer possible, and the two large segments of the party - the left-wing faction and the centrist faction - broke apart. Under the leadership of Ronan Cornelius Marcán, the left-wing faction of the National Social Union departed the party by October 2035, joining the Democratic Labor Party for the purposes of that year's election. The left-wing faction would later coalesce into the Social Labor Party along with the original membership of the Democratic Labor Party and the Republican Party following the Casanam Conference.