Leading Off
● Germany – Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Saxony-Anhalt state elections (March 13)
Germany held elections in three of its sixteen states, largely seen as a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel's handling of the refugee crisis in Europe. As covered in our preview last month, the main storyline was the rise of a new xenophobic right-wing party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). AfD, one of whose leaders wants police to shoot migrants at the border, entered all three state parliaments for the first time, winning between 13 and 24 percent of the vote in the three elections. The center-right Christian Democratic Union ("CDU"), Angela Merkel's party, suffered losses in all three states, most notably in Baden-Württemberg, where its vote share dropped 12 points. The center-left Social Democratic Party ("SPD"), left-wing Green Party, and far-left Left Party also suffered losses in some of the states.
Meanwhile, the centrist/liberal Free Democratic Party ("FDP") rebounded from its worst-ever showing five years ago to re-enter the Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland Palatinate landtags (parliaments). In general, AfD did well across the board, as did the mainstream party leading each current governing coalition (the Greens in Baden-Württemberg, SPD in Rhineland-Palatinate, and CDU in Saxony-Anhalt). However, other mainstream parties—both junior coalition members and those outside government—suffered as voters moved either toward AfD or the main incumbent party.
The rise of AfD has put a strain on the usual coalitions used in German politics. Germany and most of its states are governed by two-party coalitions, usually the Greens and SPD or the CDU and FDP, while the Left Party is seen as outside the mainstream. "Grand coalitions" crossing wider ideological gulfs, between the CDU and either the SPD or Greens, have also occurred but have been fairly rare. However, the rise of AfD (which, like the Left Party, no other party is willing to enter into a coalition with) has made it even harder to govern with a majority.
As a result of the elections, all three governing coalitions lost their majorities. In Baden-Württemberg, the Greens are working on a coalition with second-place CDU because a coalition with SPD, their usual allies, would leave them short of a majority. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the SPD are looking to add FDP to their coalition with the Greens, forming a colorful "traffic light" coalition (the SPD's traditional color is red and the FDP is yellow, to go along with the Greens). Finally, in Saxony-Anhalt, a grand coalition between SPD and CDU will have to add the Greens, the only other mainstream party in parliament, to form a majority. With the Left and AfD winning 47 percent of the seats in this former East German state, the mainstream is just barely holding onto power.
Overall, the results point to real problems Merkel has on her right flank as the country heads towars federal elections in 2017. AfD will almost certainly enter the Bundestag (the federal parliament) for the first time, taking votes primarily from the conservative voters who typically support Merkel's CDU. However, with the SPD (the only other party to ever lead a federal coalition in Germany) stuck in the mid-20s and still 10 points behind CDU in the polls, no one is in a position to challenge Merkel's position as chancellor. If current polling holds, Germany is almost certainly looking at another Grand Coalition between the CDU and the SPD come next year.
Oceania
● Australia – legislature (possibly July 2)
Australia's next elections are due by January 2017 and were expected to be held this fall, when ordinarily the entire lower chamber (the House of Representatives) and half of the upper chamber (the Senate) would be up for re-election. But the center-right Liberal Party, which is in charge of the government thanks to its majority in the House, is pushing to hold a so-called "double dissolution" election, where all of the Senate would be up at once instead of just half. The Liberals want to do this because they don't have a majority in Senate and that body (which is nearly as powerful as the U.S. Senate) has stymied lots of government legislation.
However, to hold a double dissolution election, the Senate has to twice reject the same piece of legislation. To force the issue, the government brought back an anti-union bill that previously failed on a tie vote in the Senate for a second vote this spring. Now it's up to the Senate to either pass the bill and hold the Liberals at bay, or reject it again and allow the government to call a double dissolution election for July 2.
Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has had strong approval ratings since taking over from the highly unpopular Tony Abbott, an intricate coup we've covered previously). However polling has shown Turnbull and his party starting to trend back downward, another reason he wants the next election to come sooner rather than later.
Asia
● South Korea – legislature (April 13)
Expats are already casting votes in South Korea's upcoming election, as almost eight percent of eligible voters live outside the country. South Korea's legislative elections are a prelude to the presidential election to be held in 2017, as the center-right Saenuri Party looks to hold onto power in both branches. As we discussed in January, South Korea has two major parties, with the other being the center-left Minjoo Party. Two other parties are contesting this election, the left-wing Justice Party and the new centrist People's Party.
The People's Party was created just this year by Ahn Cheol-Soo, who founded Korea's leading anti-virus software company. But Ahn isn't just some rich guy: He won a by-election (special election) to the National Assembly in 2013 and had previously been talked up in races for both the presidency and mayor of Seoul, the country's largest city. Ahn was briefly a member of the predecessor to the Minjoo Party, so he probably leans to the center-left himself, but he has recruited at least one senior conservative lawmaker to his new party.
As the election has gotten closer, the People's Party's polling numbers have trended downward, as voters seem to be returning to the old two major parties after dalliances with the hot new party on the scene. The Minjoo Party has comfortably put some distance between itself and the People's Party and is now firmly in second place, though still behind the Saenuri Party, which will almost certainly win the most seats. The main question will be whether the Saenuri Party wins an outright majority of seats.
Europe
● Serbia – legislature (April 24)
As predicted last month, Serbia's president has set new elections for April 24. Prime Minister Aleksander Vucic's center-right Serbian Progressive Party has a comfortable majority in parliament (158 of 250 seats), and with wide leads in recent opinion polls, it's likely to at least match its current numbers in Parliament, if not exceed them. Vucic argued for early elections on the grounds that his country needs four years of stability as it works to join the European Union, but his party's large polling advantage was undoubtedly a factor as well.
● Slovakia – legislature (March 5)
Slovakia's recent parliamentary election saw dramatic losses for the center-left Direction-Social Democracy (Smer), which fell far short of its previous majority, taking just 28 percent of the vote and 49 of 150 seats. In a completely unexpected development, the neo-Nazi People's Party-Our Slovakia surged to 8 percent of the vote and entered the legislature for the first time with 14 seats. Its success overshadowed the more traditional anti-Hungarian, far-right Slovak National Party's similar surge to nearly 9 percent and 15 seats and the appearance of another small new anti-immigrant party. The mainstream center-right was divided among several parties, two of which fell just narrowly short of the 5 percent proportional representation threshold and therefore won zero seats, while the largest, Freedom and Solidarity, only won 12 percent and 21 seats.
With the mainstream right unable to form a majority on its own and Smer the only party on the left, Prime Minister Robert Fico was forced to form a hodgepodge coalition. Fico's Smer leads the new alliance with support from the Slovak National Party and two centrist parties: Most-Híd, which largely drew support from Slovakia's Hungarian minority, and the new Network Party. Such an ideologically disparate coalition could prove unwieldy and lead to early elections down the road if any one member withdraws its support. However, with the major parties all refusing to even consider working with the neo-Nazis and the center-right badly divided, there was no obvious alternative.
Smer had previously governed with the Slovak National Party after the 2006 elections, a move that was widely condemned by Smer's fellow social democratic parties throughout Europe. The gap between the two parties on immigration wasn't as wide as one might imagine, though, after the populist-leaning Fico adopted a very hostile position toward immigrants and refugees during the election campaign. But that effort to stem the flow of center-left voters switching to the far-right over immigration, as they have done in countries such as France and the Netherlands, appears to have been in vain. Smer hemorrhaged more than one-third of its support while one in four voters supported anti-immigration or far-right parties, by far the highest proportion since the fall of communism in the early 1990s.
See the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog for a more in-depth look at the election results.
Middle East/North Africa
● Iran – legislature (April 29)
While the main event took place in February, Iran's runoffs will take place on April 29 in the 69 seats where no candidate received at least 25 percent of the vote. Moderates and centrist conservatives allied with President Hassan Rouhani are hoping to consolidate their huge upset victory by picking up at least 40 of those seats to cement their control of the legislature. There are 290 seats overall, meaning 221 members of the next parliament have already been confirmed.
Sub-Saharan Africa
● Benin – president (March 6 & March 20)
Benin, a small West African nation located due west of Nigeria, has long been one of the most stable democracies in sub-Saharan Africa. After a close result in the first round of last month's presidential election left no candidate near a majority, Patrice Talon, a cotton magnate who is the country's richest businessman, won a landslide runoff victory by nearly a two-to-one margin over Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou. Talon stood as an independent, while Zinsou had also secured the support of the main opposition party, but to little avail. The campaign saw accusations that Zinsou, the son of former president Émile Zinsou, lacked sufficient ties to the country after spending most of his career in France. Talon, meanwhile, had broken with outgoing President Boni Yayi after previously supporting his election and used his business success to bolster his image on economic development.
● Cape Verde – legislature (March 20)
Cape Verde, a small island nation off the coast of West Africa, held parliamentary elections in which the center-right Movement for Democracy ousted the center-left African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) after 15 years in opposition. From shortly after independence from Portugal in the mid-1970s until 1990, PAICV ruled Cape Verde as a Marxist single-party state, but since the advent of multi-party elections, it adopted a social democratic platform and had alternated with the Movement for Democracy for power.
Unlike many countries in the region, Cape Verde's democratic institutions have been stable for many elections, as this peaceful transfer of power demonstrates. The country will elect its president in August, when Movement for Democracy's Jorge Carlos Fonseca will be seeking a second term.
● Niger – president and legislature (Feb. 21 & March 20)
President Mahamadou Issoufou won re-election to a second term with a 92 percent landslide when opposition parties boycotted the second round. They claimed the first round of voting, when Issoufou won 48 percent to 18 percent over opposition leader Hama Amadou, was marred by fraud. (Amadou had been jailed over allegedly politically motivated charges of baby trafficking.) Issoufou's party, the center-left Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism, expanded its plurality in the proportionally elected National Assembly to 75 of 171 seats.
Issoufou has been a key Western ally in the fight against religious extremism in West Africa, with Niger and neighboring Nigeria facing attacks from Boko Haram and other militant Islamist groups. Niger only returned to democratic governance with Issoufou's initial election in 2011 after a military coup had overthrown the previous president, so this essentially uncontested election is a troubling sign for its fledgling democratic institutions.
Central America/Caribbean
● Haiti – president (provisionally April 24)
October's controversial first round, where the handpicked candidate of outgoing President Michel Martelly unexpectedly finished in first place, led to mass protests and opposition boycotts until a deal was secured to end the crisis. Martelly resigned the presidency early and the first-round results are still subject to review by a new elections commission. However, opposition parties are still critical of the integrity of the scheduled second round. They insist not only that it be delayed yet again, but that the parliamentary elections from last year also be investigated for fraud, something the international community has opposed. With the electoral commission still far from resolving the dispute, there is a strong possibility that the runoff will put off once more and Haiti's provisional government will continue in office until the crisis is resolved.
South America
● Brazil – president and legislature (2018, possibly 2016)
A wide-ranging corruption investigation has thrown Brazil into political crisis in the midst of its deepest recession since the 1930s, raising the possibility that current President Dilma Rousseff of the leftist Worker’s Party could be impeached. Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), whom Rousseff once served as chief of staff, could be barred from running again in 2018, while the 2014 presidential election results could even be nullified, which would lead to new elections this year.
A Brazilian judge investigating a massive corruption scandal started targeting Lula, who led Brazil from 2003-2011, and remains very popular with his working class base. Lula claims that the investigation is politically motivated and meant to prevent him from seeking another term in 2018. His successor, Rousseff (who's currently caught up in separate scandals), tried to appoint him to be her chief-of-staff, which would shield him from prosecution except by the Brazil's Supreme Court. However, a Supreme Court judge temporarily blocked the appointment, calling it a naked attempt to avoid prosecution. Brazil's attorney general has proposed a compromise that would allow Lula to take the appointment but strip the position of its privilege against prosecution.
Separately, Rousseff faces impeachment charges for obstruction of justice and for using illegal accounting measures to boost public spending in the lead-up to her 2014 re-election. Rousseff was dealt a huge blow this past week when the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the largest party in the lower house Chamber of Deputies, quit her governing coalition, a move many observers see as paving the way for impeachment to proceed.
If Rousseff is impeached (a vote is expected in mid-April), she would be suspended from office until the Brazilian Senate decides her fate. In the interim, Vice President Michael Temer (who himself is a PMDB member) would take over, and he would serve through 2018 if the president were found guilty. Separately, if the Superior Electoral Court (which is something like a super-powered FEC) finds that Rousseff received illicit funding in her 2014 campaign, it could void the results of the 2014 election, kick Rousseff and Temer out of office, and bring forward new elections to this year. And you thought U.S. politics were crazy.
● Peru – president and legislature (April 10)
The election to succeed term-limited and unpopular leftist President Ollanta Humala was shaken up in March after two major centrist candidates were disqualified from running by Peru's electoral tribunal ahead of the first round of voting on April 10. Economist and All for Peru Party leader Julio Guzmán was thrown off the ballot due to technical issues with his candidacy registration, while Cesar Acuña Peralta, governor of the region La Libertad, was disqualified for running afoul of laws against vote-buying. Both had been seen as contenders to make the runoff against front-runner Keiko Fujimori, daughter of disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori and leader of the right-wing Popular Force. Fujimori herself was recently cleared of similar allegations of vote-buying.
Fujimori has long had a clear lead in the polls but is not expected to achieve the majority necessary to avoid a runoff on June 5. Now, she could potentially face former Prime Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of the Alliance for Great Change in what is expected to be a closely contested second round. However, polling in many Latin American countries typically lacks the reliability of polling in more developed countries such as the U.S., and the fight for the second runoff spot is still up in the air.
The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by David Beard and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from James Lambert and Taniel, and is edited by David Nir.
