Leading Off
● Spain – parliament (April 28)
Spain's April elections saw the center-left Socialist party win its biggest victory since 2008 after a late surge in the polls, putting it in a strong position to form the next governing coalition and prevent a right-wing coalition from taking power.
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Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez took power in 2018 only after the previous right-wing minority government was brought down by regional nationalist and Catalan separatist parties, but those very Catalan separatists who had flipped to the Socialists' side later forced new elections by opposing their budget. Now Sanchez will have a firmer mandate to pursue his agenda with multiple paths to attain a governing majority.
Unlike the previous Socialist minority government, Sanchez's party is now the biggest, controlling 35% of the seats. However, some of the Socialists' gains came from the left-wing Unidas Podemos, which lost a third of its previous support and won just 12% of seats, putting the two natural allies just short of a majority.
Still, the outcome was a major win for Sanchez, since he no longer has to rely on the Catalan separatist parties. Instead, various Basque nationalist parties and other regional nationalist parties could give the Socialists a working majority combined with Podemos.
One potentially appealing option for the Socialists would involve striking a deal with the separatist Republican Left of Catalonia; that party, along with Podemos, would provide a left-of-center majority without the need to rely on any of the right-of-center regionalist parties in the Basque Country and elsewhere. Alternately, while both the Socialists and the center-right Citizens party have publicly ruled out a grand coalition, such an arrangement isn't impossible if the Socialists' negotiations with smaller parties fail.
One outcome we won't see is a right-wing majority government that includes the far-right Vox party. Vox won 7% of seats to enter Parliament for the first time; Spain has not seen an avowed far-right party take any seats since the end of Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship in the 1970s. While Vox appears to have capitalized on the backlash to the Catalan independence push in the rest of Spain, much of their support appears to have come at the expense of the right-wing People's Party (PP).
PP had been the largest party on the right for decades, but it lost half its support and collapsed to just 19% of seats, which combined with Citizens' 16% and Vox's 7% is well short of a majority. After being in power from 2011 to 2018, PP was badly hurt by corruption scandals, and the Socialists further gained ground by campaigning on economic policies popular with lower-income and middle-class voters.
It will likely take some time for Sanchez to reach an agreement with the other parties to form a governing coalition or back another Socialist minority government. It also remains unclear how that government will handle the situation in Catalonia, where Sanchez has opposed an independence referendum but has tried to maintain a dialogue instead of harshly cracking down as the previous PP-led government did.
However, this election was unquestionably a victory for the center-left and a major defeat for the mainstream right, whose flirtation with the radical-right did little to stem the surge of voters favoring the real thing in Vox. That likely cost PP and Citizens dearly among moderate voters and paved the way for Sanchez's victory.
Notable Developments
● Australia – parliament (May 18)
On May 18, Australia's center-right Coalition will attempt to win its third straight election with its third different prime minister. The center-right Liberal Party and center-right (and rural-based) National Party have governed since 2013, but this alliance has turned out two prime ministers in the middle of their terms (hardliner Tony Abbott in 2015 and relative moderate Malcolm Turnbull in 2018). That's left the relatively more conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison to try to finish the hat trick.
The Coalition has trailed the opposition center-left Labor Party for almost its entire term in office, through recent polls show a close race. Having lost its narrow majority in the 150-seat chamber due to a defection and a defeat in a by-election to fill Turnbull's vacant seat, the Coalition needs to gain two seats to win back the majority, while Labor needs seven seats (seven seats are currently held by minor parties and independents).
Labor has campaigned on tackling climate change and subsidizing child care, while the Coalition has promised to freeze Australia's refugee intake and cut taxes. Morrison has also attempted to fearmonger around Labor's management of the economy given its commitment to tackling inequality, while Labor has struck back on the issue of stagnant wages and inflation.
● Belgium – parliament (May 26)
Belgium's center-right government collapsed in December over an international migration treaty, leading to a caretaker government taking power in the interim, ahead of elections later this month. However, Belgium's fractious multiparty system and ongoing division between its Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Walloon (French-speaking) populations could mean that the interim government sticks around for quite a while even though left-leaning parties are poised to regain ground compared to the last elections in 2014. Indeed, after the 2010 elections, Belgium was left without an elected government for a record 589 days.
It would be impossible to summarize here all 13 parties in Parliament (six Dutch-speaking, six French-speaking, and one trans-regional), but there are a few notable changes since 2014. Polling in Flanders shows the first-place, center-right Flemish nationalist N-VA has lost a bit of ground, while the center-left Green party and far-right ultranationalist Vlaams Belang party have both risen and moved into the double digits. Meanwhile, in Wallonia, both leading parties (center-left Socialists and center-right Reformist Movement) have dropped while the center-left Eccolo (again Green) Party and the far-left Workers' Party have seen their fortunes improve.
Notably, the Workers' Party is the one party that doesn't identify exclusively with Flanders or Wallonia, but it's found more success in the latter to date. There's also one place in the country where parties on both sides of the divide compete head-to-head: the Brussels-Capital Region, which is an enclave inside of Flanders but is home to many French speakers as well. Indeed, in the 2014 elections, French-speaking parties dominated in Brussels, and polls point to a similar outcome this time.
● Benin – legislature (April 28)
Benin held elections to its legislature in late April, but they could hardly be described as free or fair—a setback for a democracy that had been one of the most stable in West Africa. After winning the 2016 presidential election as a reformer, President Patrice Talon and his allies pushed through a change in the election law ostensibly designed to pressure small parties to merge with one another. However, combined with new eligibility restrictions, only two parties even qualified to run, both of which are allied with Talon. Talon's government furthermore cut off internet access and used force to break up protests as the opposition boycotted the vote.
● Canada: Alberta – provincial parliament (April 16)
Alberta's first left-of-center government since the 1930s fell to defeat at the hands of the United Conservative Party last month, with newly-elected Premier Jason Kenney taking charge of a 63-seat caucus while the outgoing New Democratic Party saw its 52 seats reduced to just 24.
The result was not a surprise—in many ways, this cake was baked when Alberta's two rival conservative parties that had split the vote in 2015 finally merged in 2017—but the UCP's 22% margin in the popular vote exceeded the expectations of most pollsters. While the NDP, led by Rachel Notley, forged a moderate path on most issues during its single term in government, the province's oil-dependent economy never recovered from a globally induced slump in oil prices that began just months before the party took power in 2015.
Kenney campaigned on an aggressive pro-oil and trickle-down agenda, promising to undo many of the NDP's environmental reforms (including a controversial carbon tax), slash corporate tax rates by a third, and wage a PR war against critics of the province's oil sands and long-stymied efforts to expand pipelines for the province's plentiful petroleum output. While the NDP criticized the UCP for harboring extremist candidates (including a literal MAGA-hatter) in its ranks, the issue ultimately did not gain much traction for the NDP outside of its stronghold in the provincial capital of Edmonton.
The election result also marked the first time since 1993 that only two parties will have representation in the province's legislature. The results yielded the effective death of the centrist Alberta Liberal Party, which was shut out of the legislature for the first time since 1982, after garnering just 1% of the popular vote. The future is much more uncertain for the Alberta Party, which pitched itself as a centrist alternative to both the NDP and UCP and managed to triple its share of the vote over the previous election, taking 9%. However, despite that growth, the party lost all three of its seats to the UCP in a legislature elected by plurality winner in single-member districts.
● Canada: Newfoundland and Labrador – provincial parliament (May 16)
Voters in Newfoundland and Labrador will head to the polls this month to decide the fate of the incumbent Liberal Premier Dwight Ball, who is vying for a second term in office after he ended a decade of Progressive Conservative dominance over the province's politics. Early polls show a competitive race between Ball's centrist Liberals and Ches Crosbie's PCs.
● Canada: Prince Edward Island – provincial parliament (April 23)
After three terms in power, Prince Edward Island's incumbent Liberal Party was toppled in dramatic fashion: Not only did the center-right Progressive Conservatives snag a minority win with 37% of the vote—the first minority government elected in Canada's smallest province in over a century—but the Liberals managed to lose second place to the upstart Green Party.
With the PCs winning 12 seats to the Greens' 8 and the Liberals' 6, the result marks the first time in Canadian history that a Green party will hold the status of an official opposition in any provincial legislature. (Despite the Greens and the Liberals winning a combined majority of seats, a Liberal-Green coalition government does not appear to be an immediate possibility.)
The province's voters also narrowly defeated a proposal to adopt a system of mixed-member proportional representation in place of the current first-past-the-post rules, with 51% voting against and 49% voting in favor.
● Estonia – government formation
In a somewhat surprising development that has drawn outcry both domestically and within the European Union, Estonia's center-left Centre Party attained a second term in power by forming a coalition with the far-right Conservative People's Party (EKRE) and the conservative Fatherland Party, dropping the center-left Social Democrats from its coalition. That move broke a pre-election pledge by Centre not to work with EKRE, but March's election left no ideological bloc with a clear majority.
Like virtually all far-right parties, EKRE is stridently against immigration, and the coalition agreement maintains that Estonia won't take in any refugees under an EU-led quota system. The new government also agreed to hold a referendum in 2021 to ban same-sex marriage.
● Finland – parliament (April 14)
Just as the polling predicted, Finland's left-leaning parties gained seats at the expense of the previous center-right governing coalition. While the center-right Centre Party, the conservative National Coalition Party, and the radical-right Finns Party won a majority of seats, just as they did in 2015, the center-left Social Democratic Party is expected to lead the next coalition for the first time in 16 years. That's because the coalition those three right-of-center parties formed under Centre after 2015 broke apart after the Finns moved further to the right, prompting the other major parties to vow not to work with them.
But with the center-left alliance winning just two-fifths of the seats in Parliament, it would need either of Centre or National Coalition to attain a majority. However, it's possible that a broad grand coalition could be formed, something that has happened regularly in recent decades.
● India – parliament (April 11 through May 19)
As the world's most populous democracy, India is holding the biggest election in history in several phases from April through May. We previously detailed the background on this year's election, in which the right-wing Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a second term in power against the center-left United Progressive Alliance led by Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress party. Results will be declared on May 23.
● Indonesia – president and legislature (April 17)
Incumbent President Joko Widodo won re-election as president of Indonesia, defeating former Army Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto for a second time. Widodo, a moderate compared to the more nationalistic and right-wing Subianto, won by a slightly larger 56-44 margin compared to his 53-47 win in 2014. His party remained the largest in the legislature, though it's far from a majority given the large number of parties competing.
● Israel – parliament (April 9)
Israel's center and center-left has found itself in the worst sort of Groundhog Day scenario imaginable, having narrowly lost to a right-wing alliance led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the fourth consecutive election in a row. Netanyahu's radical-right Likud Party won 35 seats and other pro-Netanyahu parties (parties of the center-right, extreme far-right, and Orthodox Haredi religious parties) won a combined 30 seats, giving Netanyahu 65 seats in the 120 seat Knesset (Israel's parliament). Blue and White, a new centrist alliance that led the anti-Netanyahu push, also won 35 seats, but the combined center-left took a meager 10 seats, as did the Arab-supported party lists.
There was a small silver lining for Netanyahu foes, though, as two right-wing parties failed to meet the 3.25% threshold to enter the Knesset. Zehut, a new libertarian party that supported marijuana legalization but held far-right views on other issues, had been polling comfortably above the threshold but its support failed to show up on Election Day, not even hitting 3%. And New Right, a right-wing party launched by ultranationalist Naftali Bennett, who had at times been tipped as a successor to Netanyahu, missed the threshold by just 0.03%.
Netanyahu still faces a looming indictment on corruption charges later this year, and it's unclear if he can remain prime minister once it formally comes down (both from a legal perspective and if his coalition partners will allow it). But for now, in both his own eyes and the eyes of the country's electorate, Netanyahu remains Israel's indispensable man.
P.S. We recommend two recent articles that help explain Israel's turn to the right in recent years. One piece, by Laura Adkins and Ben Sales for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, explores how Israel's youth have grown more conservative; in contrast to the U.S., where younger voters lean to the left, pre-election polls in Israel found that younger age cohorts were more likely to support Netanyahu than older age groups.
The other, by Sue Surkes for the Times of Israel, examines Israel's "periphery": the so-called "development towns," isolated from the country's major cities, where governments in the 1950s and '60s forcibly settled immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. These "Mizrahim" (literally "easterners"), often resentful at how they've been treated by the Ashkenazi (central and eastern European) establishment that ruled the country for its first 30 years, have become a backbone of Likud support.
● Malawi – president and legislature (May 21)
The southeastern African nation of Malawi will elect its national government in May, and President Peter Mutharika of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is seeking a second five-year term. Mutharika faces a challenge from several opponents, including his own vice president, Saulos Chilima, who left the DPP in 2018 to form his own party; Lazarus Chakwera, who leads the opposition Malawi Congress Party (MCP); and Atupele Muluzi, who leads the United Democratic Front (UDF) and serves as Mutharika's health minister after allying with him following the 2014 elections.
Both the president and members of the legislature are elected by plurality winner, and no party holds a legislative majority prior to 2019's vote. The MCP ruled the country as the sole legal party from 1966 to 1993, but since the return of multi-party elections in 1994, only the UDF and the DPP have won in presidential elections.
● Maldives – legislature (April 6)
The pro-democracy Maldivian Democratic Party won a landslide victory in last month's elections, taking 65 of 87 seats in the country's legislature, with the second and third place parties winning only five seats each. This follows the MDP's surprise presidential victory last year and gives the party complete control of government for the first time since its founding in 2005. The party has said it wants to reduce political influence over the police and judiciary and tackle corruption in this small Indian Ocean nation that only saw its first democratically elected president in 2008, when longtime dictator Maumoon Abdul Gayoom lost.
● Panama – president and legislature (May 5)
Voters in Panama will elect their next president and members of their unicameral legislature this month. Last month, we previewed why the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party is favored to return to power for the first time in a decade.
● South Africa – parliament (May 8)
The center-left African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994, is facing its toughest election yet, with rising challenges from both the left and right.
The ANC has never won less than 62% of the vote in a general election, but polling in the past year has put it anywhere from 48% to 61%. The centrist Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, made progress in local elections in 2016 and has benefited from electing its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane. It will look to improve upon the 22% it won in 2014.
More significant has been the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a far-left party founded by former ANC youth leaders in 2013 and led by Julius Malema. The party won 6% of the vote in 2014 and is now polling in double digits. While the ANC is certain to finish comfortably in first place and continue governing the country, there is a small chance that a poor showing could see it lose its majority in the National Assembly, forcing them to rely on other parties to pass legislation.
● Ukraine – president (April 21)
As expected, President Petro Poroshenko lost Ukraine's presidential runoff to comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who ousted the incumbent in a 73-24 landslide after Zelensky had led 30-16 in the first round. Poroshenko's term in office was marred by a destabilizing war with Russian-backed separatists and his failure to reform an economy plagued with corruption and dominated by oligarchs.
Zelensky, who is Ukraine's first Jewish president and is a native Russian-speaker, has never held office before but played a fictional president on a popular TV show. He ran a populist campaign focused on taking on the corrupt establishment while offering only limited details on the policies he will pursue. However, Zelensky did take a hard line against Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin in late April when Putin offered passports to Ukrainians in the separatist-controlled eastern territories. Zelensky shot back with an offer of Ukrainian citizenship to Russians and "all people who suffer from authoritarian and corrupt regimes."