This fall, Americans will vote in an exciting and close presidential race that has already dominated the news for the better part of a year. However, many other countries are holding national elections this year, with consequences for hundreds of millions of people—and U.S. foreign relations—that make them worth following, too. Daily Kos Elections is therefore pleased to present our guide to national elections around the world this year.
Our focus is on executive and legislative races in countries whose elections are, by and large, free and fair, such as Taiwan or Ireland. However, we've also included some states whose electoral practices don't conform to traditional democratic norms but where, nevertheless, election outcomes are uncertain and can have an impact on how power is distributed and exercised. Iran is one such example. We don't discuss nations with entirely un-free sham elections, like Russia. (We've also left out a few microstates.)
A couple of notable countries have already held elections this year, but many more are on tap. Join us as we take a month-by-month look at what's on the 2016 ballot around the world (and be sure to check out our general explanatory notes at the end). You can also follow these links to jump directly to a particular country:
Australia • Benin • Dominican Republic • France • Georgia • Ghana • Haiti • Iran • Ireland • Lithuania • Macedonia • Mongolia • Montenegro • Niger • Peru • Philippines • Portugal • Romania • Serbia • Slovakia • South Korea • Taiwan • United Kingdom • Zambia • Notes
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January
Taiwan's recent election saw a historic victory for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), a centrist to center-left party whose platform calls for official independence from mainland China. That position contrasts with that of the right-of-center Kuomintang (KMT), which have governed Taiwan almost without interruption since nationalist forces lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and retreated to the island. Together with the government in Beijing, the KMT has sought closer ties between the mainland and Taiwan, and both espouse the 1992 consensus idea of a "One China" policy with an eventual desire for unification.
DPP leader Tsai Ing-wen won a 56 to 31 percent landslide over the KMT to become Taiwan's first-ever female president, after losing a close 52-46 race in 2012. For the first time ever, the DPP also wrested control of the legislature away from the KMT, which ruled Taiwan as an authoritarian state until democratic reforms in the 1990s and has only lost two presidential elections since. Taiwan's legislature is elected using a mix of plurality-winner single-member districts tied to specific geographies (similar to U.S. House districts) and proportional representation based on a party list system. To win any of the proportionally awarded seats, political parties need to earn at least 5 percent of the total nationwide vote. (This concept, which is very common abroad, is known as a threshold and helps keeps very small parties from entering the legislature; you'll see it mentioned repeatedly throughout this guide.)
DPP's unprecedented control over both the executive and legislature will enable it to enact much more of its domestic agenda than on the one previous occasion it held the presidency, from 2001 to 2008. (During that period, the KMT-controlled legislature thwarted much of then-President Chen Shui-bian's policy proposals—sound familiar?) Notably, President-elect Tsai has indicated she will not seek to disrupt the status quo with China by declaring formal independence, something China has even threatened to stop with military action, as both sides historically lay claim to governing all of greater China. (Tsai's careful parsing on this foremost of issues helped quell concerns that a DPP victory would escalate tensions with China and likely boosted her party's fortunes.)
Instead, Tsai says she'll focus on domestic issues and economic ties with the mainland. A souring domestic economy with stagnant wages, increasing housing costs, and high youth unemployment drove much of the dramatic voter swing towards the DPP. Voters were also concerned that the KMT's push for increased economic ties with China would lead to increased political ties and creeping Chinese control over public life in Taiwan. Younger Taiwanese citizens in particular are far more likely to ascribe to the ideal of a Taiwanese identity distinct from mainland China.
These concerns led to a record landslide loss for the KMT. One survey showed that while the party won 31 percent overall—a miserable showing—it received an even worse 9 percent among voters aged 20-39, demonstrating the changing course of Taiwanese politics. While it draws much of its support from the working class, the incoming DPP is not a true social democratic or labor party as one finds in much of Europe, but balances free-market economic liberalism with some support for social welfare. The DPP's platform also includes a firm commitment to civil liberties and social liberalism. All told, this election is an exciting victory for progressive forces in Taiwan and marks a modest shift in China-Taiwan relations that should be unlikely to become a threatening source of conflict for the U.S.
Crippled by years of economic austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown and subsequent Eurozone crisis, Portugal took a dramatic turn to the left in its proportionally-elected parliament last fall. An anti-austerity coalition led by the center-left Socialists that includes the two smaller radical-leftist parties ousted the center-right coalition that had implemented unpopular austerity measures.
Portugal's president is largely ceremonial, but maintains some key powers such as the ability to appoint the prime minister and to dissolve parliament for the purpose of calling early elections (as occurred in 2005). Outgoing President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, of the ironically named center-right Social Democratic Party, had attempted to block the new anti-austerity coalition from power due to its inclusion of the anti-Euro Communists and radical Left Bloc, but he relented rather than spark a constitutional crisis that could have left Portugal without an effective government until new elections could be held in June.
The 2016 presidential race saw Marcelo Rebelo de Sousar, also a member of the Social Democratic Party, win 52 percent in the first round, thus avoiding a runoff. Rebelo de Sousar, a former TV pundit with high name recognition, apparently overcame his party's recent governing record on the strength of his personal popularity. It remains to be seen how active a role he'll play in attempting to thwart the policies of the left-leaning legislature without powers equivalent to that in a true presidential system, but he has emphasized a willingness to work with the Socialist-led parliament.
February
Niger, a former French colony of 17 million people in the Sahara Desert, made headlines in the U.S. after President George W. Bush came under intense fire for claiming in his 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire "significant quantities of uranium from Africa," relying on forged documents alleging that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake powder from Niger. (This also led to the scandal known as Plamegate.)
Niger's incumbent President Mahamadou Issoufou is seeking another term and a runoff will be held if no candidate clears 50 percent in the first round. His center-left Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism only holds a plurality of seats in the proportionally-elected National Assembly but controls the office of the prime minister, with whom the president shares power in Niger's semi-presidential system. The center-right National Movement for the Development of Society and a splinter faction, the pan-Africanist Nigerien Democratic Movement for an African Federation (MNSD-Nassara), are the country's two other major parties, in addition to several other smaller parties.
Niger has been fraught with instability and multiple military coups since independence, with President Issoufou taking power when democratic elections were again restored in 2011. The country is also contending with major security issues after a series of attacks by Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda and Boko Haram. There are concerns over the integrity of the election process and allegations of authoritarianism against President Issoufou's government, which has jailed MNSD-Nassara's candidate, former Prime Minister Hama Amadou, in connection with his alleged role in a baby-smuggling ring.
Iran's somewhat free, but rarely fair, legislative elections will likely result in conservatives retaining power despite an electorate that would almost certainly vote in reformists if given the opportunity. Iran will elect the Islamic Consultative Assembly (the Iranian legislature) and the Assembly of Experts, which has no real analog in Western politics. The closest comparison might be the Vatican's College of Cardinals: The Assembly of Experts consists of 88 Mujtahids (Islamic theologians) whose job it is to oversee the supreme leader, which in reality boils down to sitting around and waiting for the opportunity to pick the next supreme leader when the current one dies or resigns.
The current parliament was elected in 2012 in the wake of the failed 2009 Green Revolution, when the vast majority of reformist candidates were disqualified from the ballot, making that election primarily between supporters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (both camps are referred to as conservatives or principalists). Khamenei supporters "won" that election, while the reformists took just 13 of 290 seats.
Iran uses a mix of single-member and multi-member districts, where voters can cast as many votes as there are seats in multi-member districts. Winners must receive at least one-third of the vote or the race goes to a runoff. Iran's Guardian Council once again barred almost all of the reformist candidates from running in this year's elections, but Iranian President Hassan Rouhani—regarded as a "moderate" who sits between the reformists and the conservatives—has appealed to Khamenei to allow more reformist candidates to run, which Khamenei could do.
The members of the Assembly of Experts elected this year will serve eight-year terms, giving them a reasonable chance of replacing Khamenei, who is 76 years old. (Technically, they can also dismiss a supreme leader, but yeah.) Assembly candidates have to pass a written and oral exam from the Guardian Council, which embarrassingly in 2006 forced the Council to lower the passing mark to ensure enough candidates. The Assembly's last election took place prior to the Green Revolution, so 29 of the 86 members elected were Reformists. It seems unlikely as many Reformists will be allowed to run this year.
The Assembly is elected with a similar mix of single-member and multi-member districts, though on a larger scale (for example Tehran is one district for the Assembly election and six separate districts in the legislative election).
CNN has a longer (if overly optimistic) overview of the upcoming election.
Irish parliamentary elections are expected to be contested by four major political parties, including one that you find in many countries and three that trace their history back to the struggle for independence in the early part of the 20th century. The center-left Irish Labour Party is a social democratic party in line with many others in Western Europe. Fine Gael supported the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty that created the Irish Free State but also left Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. Sinn Fein, which runs in Northern Ireland elections as well, resisted the treaty and continues to oppose a divided Ireland to this day. Finally, Fianna Fail split off from Sinn Fein in 1926 when it decided to accept the political landscape created by the 1921 treaty rather than continue to fight against it.
Sinn Fein has long been seen as a radical-left democratic socialist party, while Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are both centrist to center-right parties, with Fine Gael usually seen as the more conservative of the two. However, Fine Gael has only ever led the government in coalition with the center-left Labour Party, which itself has previously participated in a Fianna Fail government. Thus, traditional left-right divisions are not very useful in Ireland as both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have big tents.
Fine Gael and the Labour Party have run the country for the past five years in coalition, with Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny serving as Taoiseach (prime minister). Fianna Fail, which was the largest single party in the Dáil Éireann (Irish parliament) for 79 consecutive years from 1932-2011, dropped to third behind Fine Gael and Labour in the wake of the financial crisis and Great Recession that hit Ireland particularly hard.
Ireland uses a single transferrable vote system in multi-member seats, but thanks to a low number of seats per district, smaller parties have a tough time breaking into parliament or translating their votes into seats, even if the result is generally proportional among the few biggest parties.
Recent polling shows Fine Gael keeping its position as the largest party, though winning a slightly smaller percentage than it did in 2011 (30 percent versus 36 percent in 2011). Labour has suffered from being the junior coalition partner, as often happens, and has seen its support halved from 2011's record 19 points to a more historically typical 10. Fianna Fail is up slightly over its 2011 result at about 20 percent.
But the big story so far in this election is the rise of Sinn Fein, thanks in large part to its left-wing, anti-austerity stance. The party is polling at around 20 percent, double their 2011 share, which had been the party's best performance since the 1920s by a mile. A smattering of independents and minor parties, many on the radical left, take a non-trivial share in the polls. But again, thanks to the prevailing electoral system, they're unlikely to win many seats and predicting how their second preference support will play out is tricky.
Benin, a former French colony of 10 million in West Africa, will elect a successor to outgoing President Yayi Boni, with a runoff if no candidate wins a majority in the first round. Boni's party, Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin, nominated Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, whom critics have derided as overly loyal to France, where he spent much of his earlier career. Zinsou also has the support of the Democratic Renewal Party, which leads the opposition-controlled National Assembly and whose candidate placed second in the 2011 race for president. Opposition forces are badly divided, and Zinsou stands a strong chance of prevailing in the first round with an outright majority, avoiding the need for a runoff.
March
The center-left Direction-Social Democracy party (known as Smer-SD in Slovak) has governed Slovakia with a majority in parliament since its landslide victory in 2012 after a coalition of four centrist and center-right parties collapsed. Robert Fico is leading his party in the election, having served as prime minister from 2006-2010 and again since 2012. Fico made a disastrous run for the largely-ceremonial presidency in 2014, losing the runoff in a 19-point rout to centrist independent Andrej Kiska.
Smer-SD is currently polling in the high 30s, down from its 44 percent score at the ballot box in 2012, and the main question in the election is whether the party can hang onto its outright majority, a rarity in post-communist Slovak politics. Fico will likely remain prime minister regardless of the outcome, as the centrists and conservatives in Slovakia are badly divided, with seven parties polling between 5 and 15 percent. Parties need at least 5 percent of the vote to earn any of the proportionally-elected seats at all, so Smer-SD's majority may hang on whether some of these smaller parties are able to enter parliament.
In Fico's first government in 2006, Smer-SD led a coalition that included a centrist party that no longer exists and the Slovak National Party, a far-right, anti-Hungarian nationalist party. This move was widely criticized on the left in Europe and caused the party's acceptance into the Europe-wide Party of European Socialists to be temporarily halted. If Fico again needs coalition partners, he will likely look towards a new centrist party, Network (SIET in Slovak), which has usually polled in second with 8 to 14 percent of the vote. Other parties likely to win seats include a liberal party (which in Europe, unlike America, generally means pro-free market and less focused on social issues), a Christian Democratic party, a conservative party, two Hungarian minority parties (both on the center-right) and the nationalists.
April
President Ollanta Humala is ineligible to seek a second consecutive term, and this year's election will see an open race between several parties, using a runoff if no one wins a majority in the first round. Humala's left-wing Nationalist Party holds a plurality in the proportionally-elected Congress, but the right-leaning opposition controls the chamber.
Peru looks set to take a sharp turn to the right as Humala's government is deeply unpopular due to corruption scandals and a violent suppression of mining protests. That places Peru among similar company in South America, as leftists propelled to power by the Pink Tide movement across the continent have recently either fallen or faced deep political turmoil in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Venezuela. The current presidential frontrunner is the woman Humala defeated in 2011, Keiko Fujimori, who leads the right-wing Popular Force and is the daughter of disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori. However, a runoff is likely.
South Korea uses a presidential system and has a 300-member National Assembly, with 246 members elected in single-member districts and the remaining 54 members elected using proportional representation with a 3 percent threshold. Observers generally view the country as a two-party state with some small third parties, but that may change with the formation of a new centrist party that is polling well.
South Korea's Saenuri Party, translated as the New Frontier Party, can trace its roots back to the authoritarian rule of Park Chung-hee in the 1960s. As South Korean politics opened and became freer and more democratic in the 1980s, the Saenuri Party became the leading center-right party in the country and won the past two legislative elections with small majorities. The Saenuri Party is once again polling in first place but, but with less support than in 2012, which could put its parliamentary majority at risk.
The leading center-left party in South Korea is the Minjoo Party, and together the two parties hold 265 of legislature's 300 seats. The Minjoo Party is also polling at a lower percentage than in the last election; together, the two big parties, which won over 80 percent of the vote last time, are polling at around 65 percent of the overall electorate. A left-wing party, known as the Justice Party, holds five seats, but is polling at less than half of its previous result (from 10 percent to under 5 percent).
The leaves the new People's Party, founded just this year by Anh Cheol-Soo, who founded Korea's leading antivirus 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. Anh was briefly a member of the predecessor to the Minjoo Party, so probably leans to the center-left himself, but he has recruited at least one senior conservative lawmaker to his new party.
The People's Party has been polling in the high teens, with one poll putting it as high as 27 percent, just a couple of points behind Saenuri (though that was likely an outlier). South Korea's mostly first-past-the-post system makes it unclear how support for the People's Party will translate into seats, but that just makes this election well worth watching.
Also worth watching is the effect of a 2014 ruling of South Korea's Constitutional Court, which reduced how widely the population could vary between individual districts. Previously a large district could have up to three times the population of the smallest district, but the court lowered the maximum size to double the smallest district. The changes are likely to benefit urban areas and the centrist and leftist parties at the expense of rural areas and the Saenuri Party.
In 2015, the leader of Macedonia's center-left opposition, Zoran Zaev, was charged with plotting a coup to overthrow the incumbent government. In response, he accused right-wing Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of wiretapping more than 20,000 Macedonian officials, and even charged that Gruevski had covered up the murder of a young man by a police officer in 2011. Protests—some violent—erupted, but eventually the European Union was able to help negotiate the Przino Agreement, which formed a technical government of the two largest parties and called for early elections.
On January 15, Gruevski resigned and confirmed that elections would be held on April 24. Polling is sparse, but one survey conducted last fall indicated that Gruevski's right-wing VMRO-DPMNE party (which easily wins the contest for Longest Political Party Acronym in this guide) was leading Zaev's center-left SDSM. Two other parties, the center-right BDI and the right-wing ethnic Albanian DPA, are also expected to receive significant support. Macedonia's parliament is proportionally elected with a 2 percent threshold.
May
The United Kingdom will be holding a variety of elections on May 5, four of which deserve particular notice. The devolved parliaments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland will all hold elections, as will London for its new mayor and city assembly. Many local areas in England will also elect portions of their local council.
Like the UK itself, London, Scotland and Wales all have a center-left Labour Party, a center-right Conservative Party, and the centrist Liberal Democrats. In addition, the right-wing populist, anti-European Union UKIP (UK Independence Party) will compete in the London and Welsh elections. Meanwhile, the left-wing separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) will compete in Scotland, and the left-wing separatist Plaid Cymru will compete in Wales.
The proportionally-elected Scottish Parliament is controlled by the SNP, which dominated both the previous Scottish election in 2011 and last year's UK general election in the region. The SNP supports independence for Scotland, but after losing a referendum on the matter in 2014, the party has focused on greater powers for the regional parliament and other progressive goals. The SNP is expected to retain its majority, with the main question being how many seats Scottish Labour loses to the SNP. (Labour got virtually wiped out by the SNP in Scotland in the 2015 election.) The Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Liberal Democrats are expected to remain in third and fourth place, respectively.
The National Assembly for Wales is controlled by Welsh Labour, which has been the largest party in every election since the body's creation in 1999. Welsh Labour has exactly 30 of the 60 seats in the chamber, and it's expected to lose seats in May but still remain the biggest party under Wales' proportional representation system. In the past, Welsh Labour has formed coalitions with both the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru. The xenophobic UKIP, meanwhile, has a chance to win its first seats in the Welsh Assembly.
The London mayoral election is expected to be contested primarily by Labour and the Conservatives, thanks to a modified instant runoff system, though UKIP, the Liberal Democrats, and the Green Party are also running candidates. The Conservatives have won the past two races, so Labour is eager to take back the most prominent elected office in England outside of Parliament. Polling has generally given Labour candidate Sadiq Khan a small lead over Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith.
Finally that brings us to the Northern Ireland elections, which are contested by completely different parties, due to the longstanding conflict there popularly known as "The Troubles." The right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and center-right Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) represent pro-UK Protestants (collectively called unionists) while left-wing Sinn Fein and the center-left Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) represent Catholics who want Northern Ireland to reunite with the Republic of Ireland (and are known as nationalists). The Alliance Party is the one major party in Northern Ireland that doesn't fall along traditional unionist/nationalist lines and is a liberal centrist party, similar to the Liberal Democrats. Like Ireland itself, Northern Ireland uses a single transferrable vote in multi-member seats.
In the Northern Ireland Assembly, which was created by the historic Good Friday Agreement, anything controversial must pass with a majority of both unionists and nationalists. For similar reasons, the region is governed jointly by the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, who represent the largest unionist (the DUP) and nationalist (Sinn Fein) parties. As a result, the elections are unlikely to alter how Northern Ireland is governed.
The current president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, is term-limited and cannot run again. Through Aquino is from the centrist Liberal Party, his vice president, Jejomar Binay, is from the right-wing United Nationalist Alliance (the two offices are elected separately) and is leading in recent polls to succeed Aquino. Binay's closest competitor has been independent Grace Poe, who is currently fighting to run in the election after the country's electoral commission disqualified her over questions about her citizenship and residency.
Two other candidates have significant support in recent polls: Mar Roxas, who belongs to the same centrist party as Aquino, and Rodrigo Duterte, who belongs to the center-left PDP-Laban. Both have risen in recent polls to within striking distance of Binay. If Poe's disqualification stands, it could provide Roxas or Duterte the votes need to overtake Binay. It's important to note that the presidential election is first-past-the-post, so the only thing that matters is who gets the most votes. Presidents have been elected with as little as 24 percent of the vote, though in recent years the winner has received 40 percent or more.
In addition, half the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will be up for election as well. The Liberal Party is currently the largest party in both chambers and leads broad coalitions, though the large number of parties makes it difficult to forecast how the legislature will shake out after the election. The Senate elects every seat at large with voters selecting as many candidates as there are seats and the highest vote-getters elected. The House uses 234 plurality-winner single-member districts and 57 elected by party-list proportional representation with a maximum of three seats for the first place party and a maximum of two per party after that.
Dominican Republic voters will vote for the presidency and both chambers of parliament in a single year for the first time since 1994, after changes were adopted to consolidate the lower house elections. The president is elected in a two-round system, with a runoff if no one receives a majority in the first round. The bicameral parliament utilizes plurality-winner, single-member districts in the Senate (the upper chamber) and party-list proportional representation in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower chamber).
Incumbent President Danilo Medina is seeking a second term and his center-left Dominican Liberation Party currently has majorities in both houses. The Dominican Revolutionary Party, a formerly center-left party that has moved rightward, and the Social Christian Reformist Party, a right-wing party, are the country's two other major parties. The Revolutionary Party has undergone major upheaval since the last election, with a splinter faction forming the Modern Revolutionary Party. With President Medina's personal popularity and a divided opposition, the Liberation Party is likely well-positioned to maintain its grip on power.
June
Elections for Mongolia's parliament will take place in June using a mixture of single-member districts and proportionally-elected seats with a 5 percent threshold. The incumbent coalition is led by the center-right Democratic Party along with its junior coalition partners, the left-of-center Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and the liberal Civil Will-Green Party.
Their opposition consists of the center-left Mongolian People's Party, which previously governed communist Mongolia as the sole legal party from the 1920s to 1990. (Fun fact: Mongolia was the second country to declare itself communist after the Soviet Union—following a Soviet invasion in 1924.) The MPP has since adopted a social democratic position to become one of the country's two major parties, but it experienced a schism in 2010 when the People's Revolutionary Party broke away.
Major issues involve decisions over how best to use Mongolia's vast natural resource wealth to help promote economic development and boost Mongolia's lagging economy, which is closely linked to China's. With recent economic woes tied to the collapse in commodity prices and decreased demand from China for exports, the opposition People's Party likely stands to gain.
Spring
Serbians will likely head to the polls two years early in parliamentary elections that use party-list proportional representation in one national constituency, with a 5 percent threshold for parties to obtain seats. Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić called a snap election in an effort to protect the majority of his conservative Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), a pro-European Union party that nonetheless maintains strong ties with Serbia's traditional patron, Russia. Despite holding an absolute majority of seats on its own, SNS also governs in coalition with other parties, including the left-wing Socialist Party of Serbia, the onetime vehicle of former authoritarian nationalist leader Slobodan Milošević.
The opposition is deeply divided after the Democratic Party, which governed until the 2012 elections, collapsed and split. Former President Boris Tadić, who narrowly lost re-election for this mostly ceremonial post in 2012, left the Democratic Party to form the New Democratic Party. The few polls that have been conducted give SNS a clear lead, which makes the party's decision to seek early elections—and lock in a fresh four-year term—unsurprising. SNS will seek to renew its mandate ahead of a push to join the EU in a few years, while also giving it a strong hand in dealing with the issue of relations with Kosovo.
September
Zambia just had a presidential election in 2015 to fill the remainder of the term of President Michael Sata, who died in office. Edgar Lungu, who comes from the same left-wing Patriotic Front party as Sata, won the special election 48 percent to 47 percent over Hakainde Hichilema of the centrist United Party for National Development (UPND). Lungu and Hichilema will likely face off again later this year.
Legislative elections are expected to be contested primarily by the two aforementioned parties, as well as the Movement for Multi-Party Democracy, a center-left party. The Patriotic Font currently is the largest party in the National Assembly. Both the president and legislature are elected in plurality-winner districts, though reforms to require runoffs in the wake of President Lungu's close 2015 presidential plurality are under discussion.
October
Lithuania will elect its 141-member parliament, called the Seimas, in October. Half of the seats will be allocated through proportional voting based on national lists, and the other half will be elected in single-seat constituencies in which a runoff will be held if no one wins a majority vote in the first round. In the 2012 elections, the center-left Social Democrats became the largest party in the Seimas. They ousted the ruling center-right coalition by forming an alliance with the center-left Labour Party and two smaller parties, which surprisingly included the right-wing populist Order and Justice.
Lithuania drew headlines throughout Europe over the past year, first when it joined the Eurozone in January 2015, and second when the ruling coalition chose to adopt more refugee-friendly policies than many neighboring countries. Also of note, the country is considering implementing online voting in the next parliamentary elections.
Georgia's parliamentary elections will present a test for the government of President Giorgi Margvelashvili. His Georgia Dream coalition, a big tent that leans towards the center-left and favors integration with Europe, faces off against its center-right, pro-European rival, the United National Movement of former President Mikheil Saakashvili. Other parties that favor closer integration with Russia might make gains in the wake of regional geopolitical developments and many voters' perceptions that the prospects for European integration are waning. Half the seats are contested using national party-list proportional representation with a 5 percent threshold and the other half in single-member plurality-winner districts
Montenegro's parliament was elected for four years in 2012, so the government must organize new parliamentary elections by October 2016 to elect 81 representatives through a proportional, closed-list method with a 3 percent threshold. The Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) has been the country's dominant party since the collapse of communism in the early 1990s. It has governed the country in coalition with other parties since then, and the party's leader, current Prime Minister Milo Đukanović, has served as either president or prime minister of Montenegro almost without interruption since 1991. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, the DPS-led coalition (named the Coalition for a European Montenegro) received 46 percent of the vote, far ahead of a fragmented opposition field.
There have been major transformations in the opposition landscape since then, as groups and parties of various ideological hues whose goal is to put a dent on the DPS's longtime dominance have reshuffled their structures and strategies. Đukanović has faced accusations of corruption, including from international watchdog groups; this was an issue in the 2012 elections and may have cost his coalition an absolute majority. And in 2013, the DPS's presidential candidate, Filip Vujanovic, prevailed in a very close contest that opposition groups alleged was tainted by fraud.
November
Ghana has a presidential system where a runoff is held if no one attains more than 50 percent, while the unicameral parliament uses simple plurality-winner single-member districts, just like the United States House of Representatives does. As you'd expect, this system has given rise to two major parties, the center-left National Democratic Congress (NDC), which hold the presidency and a small majority in parliament, and the center-right New Patriotic Party (NPP). John Dramani Mahama, the incumbent NDC president, is expected to run for re-election.
The country is noteworthy in that it is one of the very few sub-Saharan African countries to peacefully have undergone a democratic transition of power between different parties on multiple occasions, which is generally regarded as a sign of stable democratic institutions.
Romanians will head to the polls by November at the latest to elect both chambers of their parliament using proportional representation, with a 5 percent minimum threshold for individual parties but a higher 8 to 10 percent threshold for coalitions. The country's party system has seen dramatic changes since a Social Democratic-led coalition of social liberal, centrist, and progressive parties won a 2012 landslide victory. In the intervening years, the center-right National Liberal Party left the governing coalition to consolidate support on the right and became the country's main opposition. It won the election for the mostly ceremonial presidency in 2014 in an upset over sitting Social Democratic Prime Minister Victor Ponta, promising to respect the rule of law.
The Social Democratic government has been rocked by massive corruption scandals involving Ponta and his center-left party, which led to widespread protests. After a deadly nightclub fire last year in the capital of Bucharest, Ponta resigned in the face of criminal prosecution in November. The Social Democratic Party remains quite unpopular heading into the 2016 election, which is expected to produce a victory for the National Liberal Party based on what sparse polling there is. However, it's quite likely that no single party will win a majority and would need to include smaller parties in a coalition.
Autumn
The next Australian general election might not take place until January 2017, but it's widely expected to happen sometime in the fall of this year. The center-right Liberal Party currently leads Parliament in coalition with the rural-oriented center-right National Party after winning the 2013 federal election. While technically two separate parties, since their first coalition in 1923, they have always served together at the federal level—either both in government or both in opposition. The other leading party in Australia is Labor, which currently serves as the official opposition after leading the government from 2007 to 2013.
Internal party coups have been the most prominent political storyline coming out of Australia for the past five years. Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who won the 2007 election, was overthrown by his deputy, Julia Gillard, who then barely won the 2010 election and served as prime minister until being overthrown by (you guessed it) Kevin Rudd in 2013—who promptly lost the 2013 election.
That election was won by Tony Abbott, the Ted Cruz of Australian politics, who prevailed chiefly because of the mess made by Labor, Rudd, and Gillard. He proved to be strikingly unpopular and was booted out after less than two years by Malcolm Turnbull, who had previously served as leader of the Liberal Party for just over a year in 2008-2009 … before he got ousted by, yes, Tony Abbott. (If only we could get rid of Ted Cruz after just two years.)
The motivation for all of these rebellions has been the perceived unpopularity and/or ineffectiveness of the party leader. Turnbull, the current prime minister and the last survivor of this vicious game of thrones, has over his first few months in office improved his party's polling, but many have wondered if he's just experiencing a honeymoon period. The current Labor leader, Bill Shorten, had been out-polling Abbott, but he's now fallen behind Turnbull. However, with at least eight months to go before the election, there is still plenty of time for things to change.
The House is elected via ranked-choice voting, which allows Liberal, National, Labor, and Green party candidates to all run against each other without fear anyone playing spoiler. The Green Party regularly polls over 10 percent nationally but it only has one member in the House; its supporters' second-choice voters tend to overwhelmingly transfer to Labor. Like the U.S., Australia is divided into states, and the Senate is elected proportionally by state using a single transferrable vote system, which allows smaller parties to more easily win seats. Indeed, Australia's Senate is modeled after our own and has significant powers, though it's not quite the equal of the House: The Senate can and does block bills from becoming laws, but almost no legislation is initiated there.
We don't know when exactly they will be (November is the best guess), and we don't even know how many parties will actually hold one, but we do know that primaries are coming up in 2016 for France's 2017 presidential election. Primaries are a new arrival in France: The previous presidential election was the first time a major party selected its nominee through a vote open to all interested citizens. In the fall of 2011, the Socialist Party (PS) organized a two-round election that was viewed as a political and logistical success. Nearly three million people participated in making François Hollande the Socialist challenger to then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, offering an unprecedented level of early exposure and wide-scale energy that helped Hollande seize an early lead he never relinquished.
For the 2017 presidential election, the right is emulating the left: Officials in the conservative party, which changed its name to The Republicans (LR) this year, decided soon after Sarkozy's defeat in 2012 that they would select their next candidate through a similar wide-scale, open vote rather than through the usual practice of having party activists coronate a leader.
But it's still unclear what the election's rules will be: Sarkozy, who briefly left politics before returning to regain control of the party leadership in the fall of 2014, is very popular with hardcore party members (who actually pay party dues, unlike here) but much less so with the broader right-wing electorate. As a result, a behind-the-scenes battle is still being waged between Sarkozy and his rivals over just how easy to make it to participate in these primaries: Sarkozy would like as few voters as possible to participate, while his opponents want a more open race.
In addition to Sarkozy, the other major Republican candidate is likely to be Alain Juppé, who served as prime minister two decades ago, from 1995 to 1997. While a number of other party figures and former ministers are planning a run, the contrast between Sarkozy's hyper-energetic and unapologetically right-wing discourse (especially on matters of immigration and security) and Juppé's efforts to appear more measured have defined the early campaigning. Juppé has recently emerged as one of the country's most popular politicians (a big break from his past struggles, including his challenging tenure as prime minister), while Sarkozy is very unpopular. But again, Sarkozy retains strong connections with his party's base, which should keep this competition suspenseful—and it's already proving quite contentious.
The Socialist Party, meanwhile, wasn't supposed to have a primary at all this time. Once Hollande became president, he was his party's logical candidate in 2017, much as incumbent presidents in the U.S. rarely face primary challenges. But within a year Hollande's approval rating had collapsed to record lows, and questions emerged as to whether he was in any position to run for re-election.
Hollande's electability hasn't been the only issue: He has faced loud dissatisfaction within the PS (and the left at-large), first over his austerity-friendly economic policies, and in recent months over his decision to call for a constitutional amendment that would strip dual nationals convicted of acts of terrorism of their French citizenship. In January 2016, a group of prominent left-wing figures—including economist Thomas Piketty—published a manifesto calling for the organization of a "grand primary of leftists and environmentalists" to offer an alternative to Hollande.
It's not clear whether any Socialist leader will push that line, or what Hollande would do if pressure increases for him to go through a primary. He might not even run for another term if his poll numbers remain weak through the summer of 2016 and there's is no decline in the unemployment rate. If Hollande calls it quits, the PS could organize another primary, but it's also possible that a politician like current Prime Minister Manuel Valls could try to impose him- or herself as the party's obvious back-up. Other small, left-wing parties, like the Greens, may organize primaries as well.
Once the center-left and center-right choose their candidates, they will have their work cut out for them not just against each other but also against Marine Le Pen, the undisputed leader and presidential candidate of the far-right National Front: All three contenders will be vying for two spots in an all-but-guaranteed runoff. Polls show the National Front with a clear edge for the first runoff slot, so the candidates that the Republicans and Socialists choose to nominate could have a major impact on which party takes the second slot given the unpopularity of both Sarkozy and Hollande.
Haitian politics briefly made news in the U.S. when rapper Wyclef Jean sought to return home in 2010 to run for president, following the earthquake earlier that year that devastated his country. Jean was disqualified from running, and while an election was concluded the following year, it's not clear when—or even if—the next one will take place.
The first round of Haiti's most recent presidential election took place in October, but the runoff has repeated been delayed with no date presently set, thanks to controversy over the integrity of the process. President Michel Martelly is constitutionally barred from running again, but allegations of vote rigging on behalf of his preferred successor, Jovenel Moïse (a plantation owner known as the "Banana Man"), led opposition candidates to condemn the entire election as a farce. There have been violent protests, and second-place finisher Jude Célestin vowed a boycott, claiming the first round was rigged.
The New Yorker recently published a detailed look at Haiti's current political picture. As for Jean, he supported Martelly in 2011 but has now switched sides: Last fall, he released a song in Haitian creole promoting an alternative candidate, Jude Celestin.
Notes:
Like the U.S., most of Africa and Latin America follow a presidential system. By contrast, most of Europe and many parts of the former British Empire use a parliamentary system, where the legislature selects a prime minister and therefore holds most executive power.
Many foreign elections also differ from American elections in one key respect. While in American elections, candidates typically run in single-member districts and those who earn a mere plurality of votes almost always win (a system known as "first past the post"), most other countries use one of two methods to ensure that victors have attained a majority of votes: runoffs or proportional representation (PR), which awards seats in multi-member districts in proportion to the popular vote.
PR can be implemented in many ways. The most common method is party lists, where each party puts together a list of candidates running under its banner. Each party is then awarded seats in proportion to its share of the vote, which are filled by the candidates on its list. In some systems, parties determine the ranking of the list (closed-list), while in others their voters do (open-list), but with both types of list the voters cast a vote for the party itself. The other popular approach is called single transferable vote (STV) (a version of instant runoff voting), where voters rank their preferred candidates of any party individually.
This guide was written by David Beard, Stephen Wolf, and Taniel Nichanian.