Leading Off
● Brazil – president and legislature (Oct. 7 & Oct. 28)
In a dismaying result that has dire implications for the state of democracy in Brazil, far-right Congressman Jair Bolsonaro came close to winning the open presidency in the first round of voting. Bolsonaro secured 46 percent of the vote over leftist rival Fernando Haddad, who outpaced center-left candidate Ciro Gomez 29-13 for the second runoff spot. Polling had shown Bolsonaro surging after he was almost fatally stabbed at a campaign event in early September, but few polls anticipated that he would come so close to winning a majority.
Campaign Action
Bolsonaro and Haddad will proceed to the Oct. 28 runoff, and the first few polls taken since the initial vote on Oct. 7 show Bolsonaro favored to become Brazil's next president. A member of the conservative Social Liberal Party, the former Army captain openly admires the right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Brazil and violently suppressed political dissidents from 1964 to 1985. Indeed, Bolsonaro once said that regime's failing was that it didn't kill enough people. He has, predictably, also made numerous racist, sexist, and homophobic comments.
If Haddad can unite the supporters of other mainstream parties, he might yet have a chance. However, Haddad's leftist Workers' Party lost much of its popularity following Brazil's worst-ever recession and major corruption scandals that resulted in the center-right executing a legislative coup that removed former President Dilma Rousseff from office in 2016. The outgoing government of center-right President Michel Temer is extremely unpopular after ushering through austerity policies, and disaffection with both the right and the left made an opening for Bolsonaro.
Still, the Workers' Party has strong support among low-income voters, who hold fond memories of the tenure of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from 2003 to 2011 despite the fact that he was barred from running again this year due to a corruption conviction. Haddad could make inroads by campaigning hard against Bolsonaro's right-wing economic policies, but the business community has been rallying around Bolsonaro, and support from mainstream center-right voters could be decisive as voters turn to an outsider to tackle issues like corruption and crime.
Brazil's Congress is extremely fragmented among the parties, but Bolsonaro's Social Liberal Party made major gains, going from almost no seats to nearly displacing the Workers' Party as the largest in the lower chamber. Still, neither holds much more than 10 percent of the chamber's seats. However, right-leaning parties overall made large gains at the expense of the center, which could provide Bolsonaro with many legislative allies if he's elected later this month.
Notable Developments
● Afghanistan – legislature (Oct. 20)
Afghanistan is set to elect its lower house of parliament later this month, but it remains to be seen if the vote, which has already been delayed three years, will proceed smoothly, with the militant Taliban insurgency pledging to disrupt the election. Afghanistan has struggled to form a democratically elected government ever since the U.S. invaded 17 years ago, and roughly one-third of polling places won't be open due to the threat of violence.
Parliament is highly fragmented among small parties, with the country's candidate-centered proportional representation system enabling independents to win most seats during the last elections in 2010. Nonetheless, there are two main blocs competing: those allied with independent President Ashraf Ghani, and those backing the National Coalition party's Abdullah Abdullah, who lost to Ghani in 2014 amid widespread allegations of fraud and became the newly created "chief executive of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan" as part of a unity agreement following that disputed election.
● Bosnia and Herzegovina – presidents and parliament (Oct 7.)
October's elections marked a victory for Serbian nationalist hardliners after Milorad Dodik won one of the three seats that form Bosnia's rotating presidency, for which the Republika Srpska elects a Serbian member and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina elects the Croat and Bosnian-Muslim members. Bosnia's convoluted federal system is the result of deals that helped end the deadly wars and ethnic cleansing following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but the system has failed to unify the ethnically and religiously divided country amid sky-high unemployment.
Indeed, Dodik has called for the Serbian-dominated Republika Srpska to secede from the union, and he said following his victory that he would "work above all and only for the interests of the Serbs." Dodik has close ties to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's regime, which aims to prevent Balkan countries like Bosnia from further integrating with the European Union and NATO; Dodik also was the subject of U.S. sanctions in 2017.
Meanwhile in the contest for the Croat seat, moderate Zeljko Komsic won an upset to oust Dragan Covic, a member of the country's main Croat party. Covic is a hardliner who has been seeking to divide the subnational Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two units dominated more clearly by just Croats and Bosnian-Muslims each. Covic blamed his defeat on Muslim voters and all but threatened to provoke a political crisis by questioning the legitimacy of the election.
Adding to the country's problems, there was no legal basis to conduct legislative elections in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina after its electoral law was invalidated in court in 2016 and legislators didn't replace it, leaving in doubt how a new government will be formed in parliament. Consequently, this election has triggered fears that Bosnia's fragile system will collapse and lead to the breakup of the country along ethnic lines, possibly leading to renewed violence.
● Canada: New Brunswick – provincial parliament (Sept. 24)
Despite winning a plurality of the popular vote, New Brunswick's incumbent Liberal Premier Brian Gallant is in a perilous position after the results of September's provincial election. The Liberals ended up winning 21 seats to the right-leaning Progressive Conservatives' 22. However, both of those numbers fall short of the 25 seats needed for an outright majority in the legislature, a consequence of the relative success of the left-leaning Green Party and the right-wing populist People's Alliance Party, which won three seats each.
While Gallant has vowed to attempt to continue on as premier, it is difficult to imagine a path forward for his numerically-challenged Liberals when the legislature reconvenes on Oct. 23, especially as the People's Alliance appears open to providing its votes to the PCs.
● Canada: Quebec – provincial parliament (Oct. 1)
Quebec's centrist Liberals, who have held power for all but two of the past 15 years, were defeated by the right-leaning Coalition Avenir Quebec in this month's provincial election. The CAQ's win marks a major upheaval in Quebec's political history: Since 1970, Quebec's elections have been won either by the federalist Liberals or the separatist Parti Quebecois, with minimal traction by third parties. However, under the leadership of Francois Legault, the CAQ won 37 percent of the vote and 74 seats in the province's 125-member National Assembly, and in doing so, delivered the worst defeat in decades for both of the province's major traditional parties.
The Parti Quebecois was reduced to 17 percent of the vote and just nine seats in the assembly, a number insufficient for official party status under Quebec's parliamentary system. The Liberals, under the leadership of Premier Philippe Couillard, won 25 percent of the vote and 32 seats, with the vast majority of their wins confined to their urban base of Montreal. The leftist and sovereignist Quebec Solidaire achieved a minor breakthrough, scoring 16 percent of the vote and 10 seats—a new high-water mark for the decade-old party.
The CAQ's win ushers a decidedly rightward shift for Quebec politics, not only on fiscal matters but also on cultural affairs. Legault's win comes hot off a campaign in which he advocated for immigration restrictions (which include the imposition of testing on the French language and "values"), and he has already vowed to invoke the so-called "notwithstanding clause" of the Canadian constitution in order to impose a ban on the wearing of religious garments by public servants.
● Germany: Bavaria – state parliament (Oct. 14)
The right-wing Christian Social Union in Bavaria (sister party to the center-right Christian Democratic Union in the rest of Germany) has long dominated Bavarian state politics. It has won at least 43 percent of the vote in every election since 1958, placing first in every election during that timeframe. But the CSU is facing what could be its worst result in decades as the party bleeds support from both sides over its immigration policies.
As the debate over immigration and refugees has raged across Europe, the CSU has taken a hard line, pushing German Chancellor Angela Merkel to take a tougher stance towards asylum-seekers and seeking increased police powers in Bavaria. That has turned off moderate CSU voters and pushed them primarily towards the center-left Greens. But this hard-right stance has failed to prevent the rise of Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right, anti-immigration, Islamophobic party, because of course nothing CSU believes in is extreme enough for AfD.
CSU is polling in the low to mid-30s, down from 48 percent it took in the last elections in 2013. The Greens, jumping from 8 percent to the upper teens, have moved into second place, while AfD is in double digits and fighting for third with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the centrist Free Voters of Bavaria. The classically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) and left-wing The Left party are also both fighting to cross the 5 percent threshold and enter parliament.
Given the likelihood that six or seven different parties will win seats, few two-party coalitions are feasible under current polling. The CSU won't have the votes to partner with its favored ally, the FDP, and no party will deal with AfD. That leaves the Greens, SPD, and the Free Voters, though only a CSU/Green coalition looks certain to command a majority of parliament.
● Japan – Liberal Democratic Party leadership election
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe comfortably won re-election as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, giving him the opportunity to break the record for longest-serving prime minister in Japan. Abe won after a rule change in the party allowed him to seek a third consecutive three-year term. He had been challenged once again by former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whom Abe had previously defeated in his 2012 leadership campaign. As Abe overwhelmingly won the support of members of parliament, which count for half of the overall vote, Ishiba would have needed a large victory among the party membership. But Abe actually won even among rank-and-file members, 55 percent to 45 percent, giving him a wide 69-31 win overall.
● Latvia – parliament (Oct. 6)
Latvian parliamentary elections saw a crushing defeat for the incumbent governing coalition of the center-right Unity and Union of Greens and Farmers and the far-right National Alliance, which lost their majority and held on to just 32 of the unicameral parliament's 100 seats amid major corruption scandals. Filling the breach were the radical-right populist "Who Owns the State?" party and the anti-corruption New Conservative Party, making their first entrances in parliament with 16 seats apiece.
Meanwhile, Harmony held steady as the largest party and won 23 seats, which could make it difficult for the pro-European center-right to exclude it from power over its ties to neighboring Russia. Ostensibly a social democratic party, Harmony has a socially conservative streak and is strongly supported by the one-quarter of Latvians who are Russian speakers. Indeed, it had a formal agreement with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's United Russia party until earlier this year.
Some observers fear that Harmony could form an anti-establishment alliance with Who Owns the State? and the New Conservative Party, which could mean a dramatic reorientation of Latvia's geopolitical stance. Such a coalition could seek closer ties to Russia rather than the European Union and NATO, of which the small Baltic nation is a member.
● Luxembourg – parliament (Oct. 14)
This month, the small Western European nation of Luxembourg will elect its next parliament, where Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and his center-right yet socially liberal Democratic Party is currently in a coalition with the social-democratic Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party and the center-left Greens. The conservative Christian Social People's Party is seeking to return to power after leading Luxembourg for almost all of the post-World War II era, and very limited polling suggests the governing coalition may lose its majority, making a new alliance necessary.
● Macedonia – name-change referendum (Sept. 30)
Voters in the Republic of Macedonia approved changing the name of their country to the Republic of North Macedonia by a 94-6 landslide, but thanks to a boycott by nationalist opponents, only 37 percent of registered voters turned out. That level of participation was well shy of the majority that center-left Social Democratic Prime Minister Zoran Zaev had wanted, but he has vowed to go ahead with securing final parliamentary approval for the constitutional change so that Greece will stop blocking Macedonia's bids to join NATO and the European Union.
However, Zaev's coalition with parties representing Macedonia's ethnic-Albanian minority lacks the two-thirds supermajority necessary to enact this change, so he'll need support of roughly one-fifth of the right-wing nationalist VMRO-DPMNE coalition, which opposes the switch. Consequently, Zaev said he'll be forced to call early elections if the vote fails. Furthermore, the name-change deal still has to pass the Greek parliament, where Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' radical-left Syriza party can't count on its small right-wing populist coalition partner, the Independent Greeks, and will need a few opposition votes to muster a majority.
● Madagascar – president (Nov. 7 & Dec. 19)
Madagascar will go to the polls to elect its next president in November, and if no candidate takes a majority, the top two finishers will head to a Dec. 19 runoff. This election is the second that will occur after a 2009 military takeover, and former President Marc Ravalomanana, who was ousted in that coup, is running against his successor, former President Andry Rajoelina, who led the coup and was in power from 2009 to 2014.
Also running is former President Hery Rajaonarimampianina, who won the 2013 election over a candidate backed by Ravalomanana. Rajaonarimampianina (who, incidentally, holds the record for the head of state with the longest name) resigned earlier this year amid protests over proposed electoral reforms, yielding to public pressure to have a caretaker consensus administration to oversee the election. However, it remains to be seen whether the election will be truly free and fair in this fragile democracy.
● Maldives – president (Sept. 23)
In a surprising result, opposition candidate Ibrahim Mohamed Solih defeated incumbent President Abdulla Yameen, 58 percent to 42 percent, in the Maldives' presidential election last month. Yameen had jailed many opposition politicians and cultivated ties with China, and an attempt to rig the results in his favor would not have been a shock. But after hours of silence following the election, Yameen addressed the nation and accepted the result, though he defended his own record. Solih is expected to pursue closer ties with India and the United States.
● Romania – same-sex marriage ban referendum (Oct. 6 & 7)
Romanian voters blocked a constitutional amendment referendum to ban same-sex marriage by boycotting the vote, leading to only 21 percent of voters turning out, far less than the 30 percent required for the result to be valid. (The measure won the support of 93 percent of those who did cast ballots.) Romania already bans same-sex marriage via statute, but the amendment was nevertheless pushed by conservative groups and backed by the governing Social Democratic Party-led coalition, which, despite being a center-left party on economic issues, has a strong socially conservative bent. The amendment's defeat comes as the SDP's coalition has drawn international outcry over its effort to weaken anti-corruption laws.
● Sweden – parliament (Sept. 9)
As expected, Sweden's elections were a disappointment for Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's center-left minority coalition with the Greens, which has the outside support of the left-wing Left Party. However, historic fragmentation left the country's four mainstream center-right parties with almost exactly the same number of seats as the alliance on the left, and neither bloc is close to a majority. Holding the balance of seats is the far-right Sweden Democrats, which jumped to a record 18 percent of the vote, but that was less than polls had predicted and not as much of a surge as when they grew from 6 percent to 13 percent in 2014.
All of the other seven parties on both the left and the right have vowed not to work with the xenophobic Sweden Democrats, but forming a governing coalition has been difficult. Lofven lost a no-confidence motion shortly after the result came in, with the Sweden Democrats voting against him, but the conservative Moderate Party and its three center-right allies would still need the Sweden Democrats' acquiescence in order to form a minority coalition—something the Moderates may not be able to secure, since they've resisted making any policy concessions. Consequently, Sweden could end up with a cross-ideological grand coalition of sorts, which would be nearly unprecedented in the post-World War II era.