Leading Off
● Iceland – parliament (Oct. 29)
Avast, scallywags! The tiny island nation of Iceland recently held early elections, after the Panama Papers corruption scandal brought down its center-right Progressive Party prime minister in April. Polls had shown his party—and its coalition with the more conservative Independence Party—deeply unpopular and trailing the opposition in practically every survey for over a year by that point. Opposition parties and massive protests demanded immediate early elections, but the coalition resisted, picking a new prime minister and delaying new elections for six months.
Unlike during the 2009 financial crisis, when two left-of-center parties won power, the main beneficiary of the center-right's collapse in support appeared to be the anti-establishment Pirate Party, which is part of an international movement of likeminded organizations. While they lean more toward the left on issues like the economy and social liberalism, their primary focus consisted of radical direct democracy reforms, internet copyright reform, and a whole host of issues that defy the usual left-right axis, like transparency and open government. Most provocatively, the Pirates even wanted to grant citizenship and asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Polls once gave the Pirates wide leads over every other party for months on end, but as the October election approached, their numbers declined from the mid-30s to roughly 20 percent. Complicating matters for the centrist and left-leaning opposition, a new center-right opposition party called Viðreisn (translated roughly as "Regeneration") was formed by Independence Party dissidents and surged to about 10 percent in the final months. Still, surveys showed the Pirates poised to dominate the next government alongside the center-left Social Democrats, the left-wing Left-Greens, and the centrist Bright Future, with the polls in the final week giving this four-party opposition bloc an average four percent lead over all three center-right parties, not just the two in the government.
However, when the results came in, it was apparent that the polls seriously overestimated the Pirates and the opposition bloc.
The Pirates won just 14.5 percent of the vote, coming in third behind the Left-Greens with 15.9 percent. Independence performed better than expected, easily coming in first with 29 percent, and while the Progressives collapsed, Regeneration won 10 percent, meaning center-right parties won 51 percent of the vote to just 43 percent for the four parties in the center and on the left. In the end, the opposition bloc of the Left-Greens, Pirates, Bright Future, and Social Democrats won just 27 of 63 seats. However, the two-party government coalition itself won just 29 seats, leaving Regeneration to play the role of kingmaker with its seven seats.
Predictably messy coalition negotiations have followed. Regeneration has refused to support the Progressive-Independence coalition, despite leaning more toward the right on issues like the economy and the free market. One major dispute stems from Regeneration's strongly pro-European Union stance. EU membership has been very unpopular in Iceland and contributed to the collapse of the last Social Democratic-led coalition in the previous election in 2013. Attitudes toward the EU cut across ideological lines: the Left-Greens are also "Euroskeptic," but Bright Future and the Social Democrats share Regeneration's pro-EU stance, while the Pirates want to put the issue up to a popular vote.
As the largest party, Independence had the first shot at forming a coalition. However, negotiations with Bright Future and Regeneration fell apart, and such a grouping would have only had a one-seat majority. Now, the Left-Greens will try to form a coalition with all of the opposition parties, including Regeneration, but it remains to be seen whether such an unwieldy five-party coalition could overcome its policy disagreements.
Even if such an alliance comes to fruition with the support of the Pirates, as an anti-establishment party made up of non-professional politicians, they're unlikely to play a formal role in government. Consequently, Iceland is much less likely to embark on the great experiment in direct democracy that looked possible during the heat of the Panama Papers scandal, nor will the world see a tiny nation stand up to the global internet copyright and intellectual-property regime. Although the Pirate Party was supposed to be the main story of 2016's elections, they might have just found themselves marooned.
There was one positive development worth noting, though: Women will now make up a record 48 percent of Iceland's new parliament, the highest rate in Europe and the fourth-highest in the world. Iceland could also have its second woman prime minister if Left-Green leader Katrín Jakobsdóttir can form the next government.
Europe
● Austria – president (Dec. 4)
Austria's presidential election has been long-delayed following a debacle involving ballot counting procedures, but the runoff will finally take place—again—in December. The first time Austrians voted in their runoff in May, center-left Green Party-backed candidate Alexander Van der Bellen narrowly prevailed by 0.7 percent over far-right anti-immigrant Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer. However, the country's high court later ruled that mail ballots were incorrectly counted early, and it annulled the results. A rerun was scheduled for October, but that had to be delayed another two months after problems with ballots coming unglued when mailed.
Now that we're on again, polls again show this latest contest coming down to the wire, with Hofer just barely ahead. If Hofer wins, he would become Europe's first elected far-right head of state since World War II and could be a natural Donald Trump ally. Although Austria mostly uses a parliamentary system, the president commands the armed forces and can "dissolve" parliament to force early elections. And Hofer indeed wants to proceed with dissolution and hold early elections instead of waiting until 2018. With his party easily polling in first place with over one-third of the vote, the far-right could soon gain serious power in parliament, which is far more important than the presidency.
● Bulgaria – president (Nov. 6 & 13)
Bulgaria mainly uses a parliamentary system, but in November, its presidential election results dealt a stinging rebuke to the right-leaning governing coalition. Rumen Radev, who had the support of the center-left Socialists, defeated Parliament Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva, who hailed from the center-right GERB party of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. (Borisov resigned following his party's landslide presidential loss.) Although Bulgaria is a member of both the European Union and NATO, Radev has sought closer ties with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Early parliamentary elections are expected to take place as soon as March following Borisov's resignation, and Radev's victory could foreshadow the Socialists' resurgence after they (and the Turkish minority-interest Movement for Rights and Freedoms party) badly lost in 2014.
● Croatia – parliament (Sept. 11)
As expected after their surprise victory in September's parliamentary elections, the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) made a deal with the small center-right Most party and various ethnic minority parties to form another right-leaning coalition government. After HDZ pivoted away from right-wing populism and more toward the center when it selected Andrej Plenković as its new leader and prime minister, this coalition might prove longer-lived than the previous HDZ-Most coalition, which only lasted from January through June.
● France – Republicans party presidential primary (Nov. 20 & 27)
In 2014, center-left Socialist President François Hollande plucked Emmanuel Macron from the finance world to make him finance minister, thinking that this move to the center would help revive his struggling administration and help him win a second term. Instead, Macron used every opportunity to elevate his own profile, becoming a media darling and continually taking on the leadership of the Socialist Party by proposing to weaken the country's social welfare system, angering the party’s working-class base.
Macron resigned from the cabinet in August, and in November he announced that he would run for president himself. Macron did not specify whether he would run in the Socialist Party’s primary in January, but given his attempt to position himself above the partisan divide, there’s a good chance he’ll bypass the primary and run on his own, either as an independent or by creating his own political party. Hollande remains incredibly unpopular with voters across the ideological spectrum, and there’s no guarantee that he will even be the Socialist nominee in next year’s presidential election, a weakness Macron hopes to exploit.
France uses a runoff system: If no candidate wins a majority in the first round, the top-two finishers advance. Macron’s entry into the race plus the Socialist Party’s deep unpopularity with both its base and the center have reinforced the likelihood that France will head toward a presidential runoff between the Republicans on the center-right and the National Front on the far-right.
Left-of-center voters will likely split between Macron, whoever it is the Socialists wind up nominating, and candidates from the center-left Greens and left-wing Left Party. Macron is banking on winning over some centrist and center-right voters to snag the second runoff spot. That would set up a probable match-up with National Front’s Marine Le Pen, whom polls all show advancing to the second round.
Macron’s chances may depend on whom the Republicans end up nominating, since some polls show Macron in contention if the Republicans choose ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, but not if they pick the more moderate Alain Juppé, a former prime minister. But we’ll know very soon because the Republicans are holding their primary on Nov. 20, with a runoff between the top two candidates on Nov. 27 if no one wins a majority, as is likely.
Along with Sarkozy and Juppé, the person most likely to make the Republicans’ second round is former Prime Minister François Fillon. Juppé has taken more moderate positions on immigration and multiculturalism and has spent much of the campaign as the favorite. However, no mainstream-right party like the Republicans has ever before held a primary open to any citizen rather than only to party activists, so it’s hard to gauge who will actually show up. Sarkozy in particular has taken almost Trump-like positions on immigration and Muslims, and he is hoping that hardliners make up a larger share of voters than has been expected.
● Georgia – parliament (Oct. 8 & 30)
The left-leaning big-tent Georgian Dream (GD) coalition easily won another parliamentary majority over the center-right United National Movement (UNM). Both factions generally aspire to bring the small former-Soviet republic into to the European Union and NATO, but GD also favors closer ties to Russia than UNM does. However, openly pro-Russian and anti-EU forces remained relatively marginalized, though one such party did barely pass the five percent proportional representation threshold to win a few seats.
Opposition parties cried foul over the election's conduct, alleging gerrymandering and outright vote rigging, but international observers generally deemed the process free and fair. With its new two-thirds supermajority, GD could even amend the constitution, with one possible change being a switch to a full parliamentary system
● Italy – constitutional referendum (Dec. 4)
Having watched the British referendum on the EU go up in smoke and the Colombia-FARC peace agreement referendum go down in flames, Italy decided that 2016 had room for one more important, controversial referendum. After all, what could go wrong? The so-called "constitutional referendum," pushed by center-left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, would significantly reform the structure of government in Italy, with the goal of making governments more stable and less likely to fall, as has happened often since the current constitution came into effect in 1948.
While the referendum proposes a number of alterations to the constitution, by far the most significant involves changes to the country's unusual bicameral parliament. In most parliamentary governments, such as in Canada or the United Kingdom, the prime minister's government only needs to maintain the support of the lower house. In Italy, however, the prime minister is required to maintain the support of both the lower Chamber of Deputies and the upper Senate of the Republic, meaning he or she has to work twice as hard to stay in power. The referendum would eliminate the Senate's ability to bring down a government.
(Additionally, the Italian Senate is like the U.S. Senate in that it is fully equal to its lower counterpart in the lawmaking process. Add in the country's multi-party system—in the last election, 10 different parties won seats—and the cause of Italy’s numerous governments becomes a lot clearer.)
But currently, the chances for the referendum's passage are not good. It currently trails in opinion polls by a small margin, with a large number of undecided voters. What's more, referendums like these tend to lose support as elections draw closer, so Renzi won't have an easy time getting this one passed—something he has staked his job on. In fact, Renzi has repeatedly vowed to step down if the referendum loses, and while he's hedged on that promise recently, most expect him to follow in David Cameron's footsteps if his proposals fail.
● Lithuania – parliament (Oct. 9 & 23)
Lithuania's governing coalition, which includes the center-left Social Democratic and Labour parties and the small right-wing populist Order and Justice party, suffered a blowout defeat in October. Labour lost nearly all of its seats, while the Social Democrats fell from first to third place. At their expense, the center-right Peasant and Greens Union surged from obscurity to win more than a third of all seats.
The Peasant and Greens Union then formed a coalition with the Social Democrats, giving Europe its first Green-led parliamentary majority. However, unlike most Green parties across the continent, this Lithuanian variant is more of a rural agrarian party than one that leans strongly to the left, and it combines various policy proposals from both the left and the right.
● Macedonia – parliament (Dec. 11)
A political crisis has roiled Macedonia since 2015, when Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's right-wing VMRO-DPMNE government was accused of engaging in massive illegal wiretapping of opposition center-left Social Democratic party leaders and other public figures. The president only made matters worse when he pardoned prominent governing party figures who were under investigation in the wiretapping scandal.
These alleged abuses of power led to large protests and Gruevski's eventual resignation in January, with European Union negotiators securing a plan to form a caretaker government until early parliamentary elections can take place. But Gruevski remains in charge of VMRO-DPMNE, meaning the stakes are high if the opposition hopes to pass reforms to strengthen Macedonia's fragile democratic institutions and the rule of law.
● Moldova – president (Oct. 30 & Nov. 13)
Moldova mainly uses a parliamentary system, but it held its first direct presidential election in 20 years following a constitutional court ruling. Igor Dodon of the left-wing Socialists narrowly defeated Maia Sandu of the centrist liberal Action and Solidarity Party. However, like much of the post-Soviet bloc, the nominal left-right axis is less important than the pro-European or pro-Russian division. Despite ostensibly leaning left, the Socialists functionally hold many right-wing social positions and are strongly aligned with Vladimir Putin's Russia.
With Moldova's liberal pro-European parliamentary government deeply unpopular after massive corruption scandals, this recent presidential election could foreshadow a reversal of the small Eastern European nation's effort to align itself more with the West instead of Russia when the next parliamentary elections take place in 2018.
● Montenegro – parliament (Oct. 16)
Montenegro's bid for NATO membership dominated its recent elections, with the pro-European center-left Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) strongly in favor of joining. The DPS has governed Montenegro ever since the end of communism in the early 1990s but fell just shy of a majority in October, leaving it scrambling for coalition partners among the nation's ethnic-minority parties. Some opposition parties fiercely oppose NATO membership, and many among the quarter of the population who are ethnic Serbs still harbor anti-NATO, pro-Russian sentiments following the NATO bombing of Serbia during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
DPS had alleged there was a foreign plot to stage a coup to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO, while some opposition parties denounced the results as fraudulent. DPS hasn't formally secured a new coalition yet, but if it stays in power, as seems likely, Montenegro is expected to join NATO sometime in 2017.
● Romania – parliament (Dec. 11)
Prime Minister Victor Ponta's Social Democratic-led coalition won in a landslide in 2012, but by 2015, Ponta had become engulfed in a major corruption scandal and finally resigned in disgrace amid mass protests after a nightclub fire killed scores of people in the capital of Bucharest. That led to a technocratic caretaker government for the past year and threw the Social Democratic party's 2016 election prospects into doubt.
However, recent polls have nonetheless showed the Social Democrats leading the center-right National Liberal Party. With proportional representation making it difficult to win an outright majority of seats in parliament, either of the two major parties might need a coalition partner to govern. It remains to be seen what sort of combination might result, thanks to the rise of new parties like the Save Romania Union, which has campaigned on an anti-corruption platform.
Sub-Saharan Africa
● Ghana – president and parliament (Dec. 7)
President John Mahama of the center-left National Democratic Congress is seeking a second term in office, facing off against Nana Akufo-Addo of the center-right New Patriotic Party. The much smaller left-wing Progressive People's Party is far behind in third place, but Ghana will hold a runoff if no candidate wins an outright majority. Mahama narrowly won 51-48 against Akufo-Addo in their 2012 bout, and economic issues have taken center stage. Ghana will also vote for its legislature using first-past-the-post, single-member districts, and Mahama's party will be defending its majority.
Ghana's presidential system has undergone a peaceful transfer of power twice now since the return of democracy in the early 1990s, something scholars generally consider to be a strong sign of a maturing democracy. That has made Ghana a beacon for progress in sub-Saharan Africa. However, just as in previous years, there have been lingering concerns over the legitimacy of the election itself, particularly those stirred by the NPP after its 2012 defeat.
North America
● Canada – Yukon territorial election (Nov. 7)
In Canada's sparsely-populated Yukon Territory, the centrist Liberals, led by former high school math teacher Sandy Silver, toppled the incumbent conservative Yukon Party, which had governed the region since 2002. The Liberals won 11 seats—up from one!—in the territory's legislative assembly, with the Yukon Party retaining six and the left-wing New Democratic Party getting reduced to just two seats. While it's not entirely clear how progressive Silver's governing style will be, his party did campaign on a promise to cooperate with Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plan to introduce a carbon tax in the coming years, and to impose an immediate moratorium on fracking—two positions that diverge sharply from those of the outgoing territorial government.
Grab Bag
● Colombia: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and longtime FARC rebels have tentatively reached a new peace agreement following the rejection of the previous deal in a narrow referendum defeat in October.
● Hong Kong: Pro-democracy forces won resounding support in Hong Kong's recent legislative elections, but thanks to territory's political system, lawmakers loyal to Beijing still dominate. Not content to stand by while the communist mainland government suppresses democracy, two newly elected legislators went so far as to openly call for formal independence from China. In retaliation, Beijing barred them from taking their seats, inflaming Hong Kong's growing political crisis.
● Nicaragua: President Daniel Ortega was re-elected by a wide margin with a new vice president: his wife, Rosario Murillo. However, there were many questions as to how free and fair the election was by international standards.
● Spain: As expected after they recently ousted their leader Pedro Sanchez, the center-left Socialists abstained from a vote that would allow a new government to form in parliament, allowing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to stay in office through a minority coalition of his conservative People's Party and the smaller center-right Citizens. The Socialists were unable to form a coalition of their own, and their abstention forestalls a third straight election in the span of a year.
● South Korea: South Korea's term-limited conservative President Park Geun-hye was already unpopular, and now her administration has imploded in a way that beggars belief, after a bizarre scandal where she was reportedly under the sway of a longtime family friend-turned-cult leader.
● United Kingdom: A court in the United Kingdom ruled that an act of Parliament must be passed for the country to begin the process of leaving the European Union. This almost certainly will not stop Brexit, but it will complicate its timeline and could even lead to early elections, if British Prime Minister Theresa May has difficulty passing the necessary legislation with her current Tory majority of just 12.
● Venezuela: Authoritarian left-wing populist President Nicolas Maduro's government is extremely unpopular amid Venezuela's economic collapse, and it recently shut down the recall process from being used against him before his term ends in 2019, making a mockery of what little is left of democracy there. That move further exacerbated Venezuela's ongoing political crisis and led to mass opposition protests demanding the recall proceed.
The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by David Beard and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from James Lambert, Daniel Nichanian, and Daniel Donner, and is edited by David Nir.