Yes, this is the Agora now.
It's been under discussion and planning for a while, and implementation was delayed due to a streak of special elections and overlapping regular elections since the admin wanted to do this when no elections were in progress.
The Agora is the "free speech" area. Hence the subareas for churches, political parties and election campaigns. Think of it the same way one would think of Hyde Park in London, or an area on my college campus (back when) that's still called the Rock.
This also gave admin a chance to straighten out a couple of quirks in the layout of the forums. (the lobby area of the R.A. which really wasn't a lobby, and the issues subforum that dealt with the in-game daily issues). The one thing most of you will notice is that the elections area is now part of the Agora, and this will make it easier to manage the recent trend of numerous campaign threads for general, judicial, and special elections.