Leading Off
● Brazil – president (Oct. 7 & 28)
With just a month to go ahead of October's vote, Brazil’s presidential election was thrown into chaos on Thursday, when the leading far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, was stabbed at a campaign event and seriously injured. Bolsonaro remains in the hospital after surgery, and doctors said he could take weeks to recover. But that wasn’t the only bombshell to seriously shake up the contest in just the span of a week: On Aug. 31, Brazil's electoral tribunal barred former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, from running for president again following the 12-year prison sentence for corruption he received in January.
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After presiding over a historic period of economic growth and policies that reduced poverty, improved education, and promoted racial equality, Lula remains Brazil's most popular politician, and he had dominated in the polls for the upcoming vote. However, his administration was also marred by the widespread corruption that is endemic to Brazilian politics. With Lula unable to run, his leftist Workers' Party (PT) has rallied around Fernando Haddad as its standard-bearer, but Haddad himself was indicted on corruption charges on Tuesday.
Furthermore, the tenure of Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached and removed from office in 2016 as part of a legislative coup by pro-business politicians using the infamous "Car Wash" corruption scandal as a pretext, saw the PT's popularity tumble amid Brazil's worst-ever recession. Meanwhile, center-right President Michel Temer, who replaced Rousseff, has an approval rating in the single digits after pushing through brutal austerity policies and doing nothing to tackle corruption.
Consequently, candidates affiliated with the more established parties have struggled to gain traction with voters fed up with never-ending corruption scandals, creating an opening for the far-right Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party. A former Army captain, Bolsonaro openly waxes poetic about Brazil's right-wing military dictatorship that ruled from 1964 to 1985, and as a social conservative hardliner, he's benefitted from a rising tide in the political power of his fellow evangelical Protestants in this traditionally Catholic country.
With the PT discredited in the absence of Lula, those hoping to stop Bolsonaro may end up rallying around former Sen. Marina Silva, who ran in 2014 under the center-left Socialist Party banner and came in third place. A devoted environmentalist, Silva is running this time under the centrist Sustainability Network. However, Silva's own evangelical religious views find her siding with social conservatives on issues like opposing abortion rights, though she is far better positioned to make an anti-corruption argument than the PT. It's still far from guaranteed, though, that she'll make the runoff against Bolsonaro.
Notable Developments
● Australia – Liberal Party leadership election (Aug. 21 & 24)
Last month, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was ousted by his own party and replaced as prime minister with Treasurer Scott Morrison, the fifth time in just eight years that an Australian party has taken this dramatic step.
Turnbull was one of the more moderate members of Australia's confusingly named Liberal Party (which is in fact the country's main center-right party) and had a reputation as media friendly and electable, but he'd also bred resentment among conservatives. His own career was marked by ups and downs: He lost a party leadership vote in 2008, won one in 2009, lost another vote in 2010 (all while in the opposition), and then won yet another vote in 2015 to become prime minister before finally losing again this summer (presumably for good, as he's since resigned from parliament—more on that just below). With middling poll numbers and having won the 2016 election by just one seat, the Liberals saw no reason to stick with someone who was not nearly right-wing enough for most of them.
This being Australia, though, nothing about this latest turnover was simple. Facing discontent, Turnbull had called for a fresh leadership election to preemptively try to snuff out the threat and actually won that vote 48-35 over conservative challenger Peter Dutton. But the close margin was ultimately more a sign of weakness than strength, and two days later Dutton submitted the necessary 43 signatures from party members to call another vote.
Once it was clear Turnbull would lose on the second ballot, he declined to run again. Dutton ran once more, as did Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop, a moderate. But both were defeated by Morrison, a conservative who had stayed loyal to Turnbull and thus was able to bridge the divide between the two sides.
Given the Liberals’ slim one-seat majority, Turnbull's departure from parliament could be consequential as well. His replacement will be chosen in a by-election (what we'd call a special election) on Oct. 6, which looks to be competitive between the Liberals and the opposition center-left Labor Party. If the Liberals were to lose the race, they would lose their current majority and be forced to continue on as a minority government. Such a precarious arrangement could hasten the next election, which is currently likely to take place in the spring of next year and has seen Labor with a consistent polling advantage for the past two years.
● Bhutan – parliament (Sept. 15 & Oct. 18)
The small, mountainous South Asian nation of Bhutan is gearing up for its third-ever general election in its short history as a democracy. Bhutan peacefully transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy in the late 2000s and has overseen two successful elections and a peaceful transition of power between the center-right DPT and the center-left PDP. The first round in September is expected to advance members of those two parties to an October runoff, which then uses first-past-the-post voting in individual districts.
● Canada: New Brunswick – provincial parliament (Sept. 24)
The small Atlantic province of New Brunswick will hold its next election on Sept. 24, and the centrist Liberals, which is one of a handful of provincial parties still affiliated with the national Liberal Party, will be defending their narrow majority against the center-right Progressive Conservatives. Polling has generally shown the Liberals with an advantage, but the province's first-past-the-post electoral system could complicate things with the center-left New Democratic Party and centrist Greens both polling around 10 percent.
● Canada: Quebec – provincial parliament (Oct. 1)
Quebec's centrist Liberal Party is defending its narrow majority, but polls point to the conservative Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) taking power for the first time since the party's creation in 2011, based on a platform promoting immigration restrictions and other nativist hostility toward Muslims. The Liberals aren't affiliated with the more left-leaning national Liberal Party that currently controls the federal government, but they have long been the lone major party at the provincial level to take a strong stance against those pushing for independence, a long-simmering issue in this province.
While CAQ offers more support for Quebecois nationalism and greater autonomy than the Liberals, they stop short of endorsing outright independence, giving them an opening to peel off voters. That stands in contrast to the center-left and overtly separatist Parti Quebecois (PQ), which had long been Quebec's other major party but is poised for its worst defeat ever: The PQ's more right-leaning nationalist voters have been flocking to CAQ while leftists are defecting to the more left-wing Quebec Solidaire, which also supports independence. Thanks to the province's first-past-the-post system, CAQ is likely to take to take a majority of seats in the provincial parliament even if they win the popular vote by only a modest plurality over the Liberals.
● Macedonia – name-change referendum (Sept. 30)
On Sept. 30, voters will go to the polls to decide whether to change the name of the Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia as part of a deal with Greece to end the decades-long dispute over the former Yugoslav state's formal name, which has led to Greece blocking the country's attempts to join NATO and the European Union. The actual question on the ballot reads, "Are you for EU and NATO membership by accepting the agreement between the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Greece?" which opponents have called "manipulative."
If voters approve the name change, the Greek parliament still needs to approve their end of the deal before the dispute can be resolved. However, if that happens, Macedonia's bids to join NATO and the EU will likely be jump-started sometime next year.
● Maldives – president (Sept. 23)
Incumbent President Abdulla Yameen is running for re-election amid turbulent times for the South Asian island nation of the Maldives. Yameen's predecessor, Mohamed Nasheed, was forced to step down after a police mutiny in 2012 and was controversially convicted on terrorism charges in 2015. While Nasheed was released on medical leave and now lives in Sri Lanka, Yameen used a declaration of a state of emergency to stop the Supreme Court from voiding Nasheed's conviction which would have allowed him to run against Yameen. This forced the opposition to nominate lesser-known lawmaker Ibrahim Solih.
● Mali – president (Aug. 28)
Incumbent President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was re-elected in a runoff with 67 percent of the vote amid a heavy security presence as Mali continues to deal with an Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region in the central part of the country. Keita's opponent in the run-off, Soumaila Cisse, accused the president of fraud, but Cisse's inability to unite the opposition likely doomed him to defeat regardless of potential government malfeasance. Keita won 41 percent of the vote in the first round and many other presidential candidates either endorsed Keita or declined to endorse either candidate.
● Sweden – parliament (Sept. 9)
Sweden holds its elections on Sunday, and the far-right xenophobic Sweden Democrats could surge to one-fifth of the vote over a backlash to immigration and the Middle Eastern refugee crisis. Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Lofven currently forms a minority government with the center-left Green Party, and they also have the support of the left-wing Left Party, but polling shows their alliance once again falling short of a majority. Indeed, the Sweden Democrats could possibly displace the conservative Moderate Party as the second-largest party behind the center-left Social Democrats.
The Moderates are running in an alliance with the centrist Centre Party, center-right Christian Democrats, and the center-right Liberals, but most polls have found the center-left alliance winning another plurality. One major risk for the several small parties—particularly the Greens on the center-left and the Centre, Christian Democrats, and Liberals on the center-right—is whether they'll earn the 4 percent of the vote nationwide that's required to win any seats in parliament. That could give the opposing alliance a boost in seats if one of these parties fails to cross this threshold.
All major parties have ruled out working with the Sweden Democrats, meaning Lofven's alliance could win another term as a minority government. However, there are already pressures within the Moderates to eventually soften their opposition to the Sweden Democrats if they can't win power without them.
