The Daily Kos International Elections Digest is compiled by Stephen Wolf and David Beard, with additional contributions from James Lambert, Daniel Nichanian, Daniel Donner, and Julia van Hoogstraten, and is edited by David Nir.
Note: See the end of this post for a calendar of key 2018 elections worldwide.
Leading Off
● Czech Republic – president (Jan. 12-13 & Jan. 26-27)
Campaign Action
The authority of the Czech Republic's presidency is mostly ceremonial in nature compared to the powers invested in parliament, but this month's election could see a dramatic about-face in how the country's head of state represents the nation abroad. Despite coming from an ostensibly center-left Party of Civic Rights, incumbent Milos Zeman has been virulently Islamophobic in his hostility to immigrants, and he openly supports both Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has railed against European Union refugee resettlement quotas and opposed sanctions against Putin's authoritarian regime.
With Zeman unlikely to win a majority outright, his opponents are jockeying for second place to force a runoff. Polling indicates that the likeliest Zeman opponent will be Jiri Drahos, a centrist independent who has the support of a few center-right parties and even the youth wing of the center-left Social Democrats. A Drahos victory would see the presidency adopt an outlook much more favorable to the European Union.
However, there are a few other major candidates who could pull off an upset to win the second runoff spot. Former conservative Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek is also running as an independent, and his tenure in government was more skeptical of EU integration. Nevertheless, his candidacy could suffer thanks to his coalition's collapse under corruption scandals in 2009. Pro-EU entrepreneur Michal Horacek is also running, and he too might be able to make the runoff.
Europe
● Cyprus – president (Jan. 28 & Feb. 25)
● Northern Cyprus – legislature (Jan. 7)
The Republic of Cyprus is the only democracy in Europe with an American-style presidential system, and President Nicos Anastasiades of the center-right Democratic Rally party is seeking a second five-year term. However, his chances of prevailing depend strongly on which opposition party candidate makes the runoff against him. Cyprus is also unusual among European nations in that its main left-of-center party has long been an actual communist party, AKEL. However, an AKEL-affiliated candidate, Demetris Christofias, won the presidency in 2008 amid the dawn of the Great Recession, and he presided over a financial crisis that led to an international bailout and budgetary austerity.
AKEL consequently lost the 2013 presidential race and slumped to a record low of just 26 percent in 2016's legislative elections. Recent presidential polls have their current candidate, Stavros Malas, battling for second place with center-right Democratic Party nominee Nikolas Papadopoulos, who is the son of the late President Tassos Papadopoulos. If Papadopoulos snags the second runoff spot against Anastasiades, he could have a much stronger chance of winning over voters in the center of the ideological spectrum and those who disapproved of AKEL's handling of the economy when it led the government.
A Papadopoulos victory would also see the Greek-majority Republic of Cyprus take a more hardline approach to resolving the dispute with the small breakaway republic of Northern Cyprus, which is majority Turkish and also happens to be holding elections this month. The Greek Cypriot government is internationally recognized, while only Turkey recognizes the northern splinter state, where it also has troops stationed. Following the 2015 election of center-left President Mustafa Akinci in Northern Cyprus, there were high hopes that Anastasiades and his northern counterpart could negotiate a reunification deal for the island, but those talks collapsed in 2017. Anastasiades has vowed to revive negotiations if he wins re-election.
In Northern Cyprus, voters will elect their parliament, and that election will likewise play a key role in whether reunification talks will restart. The right-wing Turkish nationalist National Unity Party, which opposes reunification, governs parliament in coalition with the center-right nationalist Democratic Party, while the center-left (and pro-unification) Republican Turkish Party and Communal Democracy Party are in opposition. (Center-left President Mustafa Akinci, who has a good deal of authority over the country's diplomatic affairs, won his election in 2015 on a platform of restarting talks with the south, but the presidency is not elected concurrently with the parliament.)
It's unclear just exactly what the balance of power will be in the next parliament, since polling is scare. What data does exist has shown the Democratic Party shedding almost all of its support while the new anti-establishment People's Party surges to take its place; depending on how well the center-left performs, the People's Party could end up holding the balance of power. However, the Republican Turkish Party had previously led a coalition with the Democratic Party after the 2013 elections until that alliance collapsed in 2016, and voters may not be ready to restore it to power.
● Germany – government formation
Angela Merkel won a fourth term as chancellor in September, but has had difficulties in forming a new government. In the wake of the election results, analysts expected Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to form a three-party coalition with the center-left Greens and the center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP). These two smaller parties have strongly divergent views on business and economic regulation, but this coalition was likely the only feasible option as the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which finished in second place, had refused to continue the "grand coalition" with the CDU in which it had had long been the junior partner.
But while negotiations took place, no agreement was reached. FDP's leader, Christian Lindner, pulled out of the talks, leaving CDU and the Greens short of a majority. This left Merkel and Germany with no obvious solution to forming a governing coalition. While other countries have long dealt with this sort of issue, post-war Germany has always been able to assemble a stable two-party alliance. With the rise of far-left and far-right parties in recent years, that is no longer a guarantee.
Other countries have usually gotten around this problem by relying on what's known as a "confidence-and-supply" arrangement (where one party formally remains outside the government but guarantees votes on the budget and other key legislation) or minority governments (where a party governs without a majority, with the other parties tacitly agreeing not to bring down the government and force new elections, at least initially). But either would be unprecedented in Germany, as would new elections, which would occur if no government can be formed.
Under pressure, the SPD reversed course and agreed to enter into negotiations with the CDU regarding another grand coalition (which governed from 2005-2009 and 2013-2017). However, many within the SPD strongly oppose another such coalition, both over policy differences with the CDU and because the SPD's worst national election results have occurred in the wake of these coalitions. As an alternative, some in the SPD's left-wing are pushing for a confidence-and-supply arrangement rather than a formal coalition. The CDU and the SPD will meet on Jan. 21 to begin formal talks on forming a government.
● Iceland – government formation
Over a month after Iceland's late October parliamentary elections, three parties finally formed a new governing coalition. The conservative Independence Party had led the outgoing government, but its center-right coalition lost its majority in last year. Somewhat surprisingly, the left-wing Left Green Movement has now formed a grand coalition with Independence and the smaller center-right Progressive Party, with Left-Green leader Katrin Jakobsdottir becoming the new prime minister. This marks the first time the Left-Greens have led any coalition in Iceland, but it remains to be seen how they and their right-of-center partners will bridge their obvious ideological divides.
● Italy – parliament (March 4)
After Italy passed a new electoral reform law in the fall, the next general election for parliament has now been set for March 4. The new electoral system will use mixed-member proportional representation: Just under two-fifths of members will be elected in single-member districts like in the U.S., while a little over three-fifths will be elected via nationwide proportional representation, where voters cast ballots for a party list instead of an individual member. After the district results come in, the proportional seats will be assigned so that the share of total seats each party gets is roughly proportional to its share of the popular vote for the party lists.
This new system is a marked departure from Italy’s old arrangement, where a party (or pre-election alliance of parties) that won more votes than any other bloc was guaranteed to win a majority. That outcome happened in 2013 when the center-left Democratic Party and its allies won a majority in the lower chamber with roughly 30 percent of the vote (though they failed to win a majority in the less-majoritarian Senate, forcing them to ally with smaller center-right parties).
Parliament had reformed that system in 2014 so that only parties or coalitions topping 40 percent would get this majority bonus in the lower chamber; failing that, the top two groups would head to a runoff to determine the majority. But the newest law eliminates the majority bonus entirely, giving Italy a system that is unlikely to produce a majority winner.
The populist and anti-establishment Five Star Movement (5SM) strongly opposed the law because it refuses to enter into coalitions with any other political party. As a result, it could win a plurality of votes but get shut out of government. Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is returning to lead the governing Democratic Party as part of a center-left alliance, but the 5SM has maintained a stubbornly narrow polling plurality ever since a small faction of left-wing dissidents formed their own Free and Equal alliance that is running separately from the Democratic Party and could score in the high single digits. However, neither 5SM nor the center-left alliance are topping 30 percent in the polls.
Meanwhile, the two major right-wing parties, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's mainstream-conservative Forza Italia and the far-right League (formerly the Northern League), are considering running as an alliance, but no deal has been reached yet. A combined right-wing coalition that includes the smaller far-right Brothers of Italy is polling in the mid-30s—above both the 5SM and the center-left coalition—though that state of affairs could change if the major right-wing parties do indeed form an alliance.
However, with the next parliament likely to be fractured between the center-left, the broad right, and the big-tent Five Star Movement, we may not know what the next governing coalition will look like until quite some time after the election.
● Spain: Catalonia – regional parliament (Dec. 21)
Spain's simmering political crisis over Catalonia's push for independence shows no sign of abating following recent elections. The northeastern region's government had declared independence after holding a disputed October referendum, but Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's national government clamped down by dissolving the Catalan parliament and ordering early elections. However, in those new elections, the same pro-independence parties that oversaw the contested declaration of independence nevertheless maintained a narrow majority of seats.
The anti-separatist and center-right Citizens Party made major gains to become the largest party, taking a quarter of the vote, but the regional affiliate of Rajoy's conservative People's Party lost half its support and dwindled to just 4 of 135 seats in the chamber. Among those favoring independence, the center-right Junts per Catalunya and the left-wing ERC-CatSi each took over one-fifth of the vote, while the small far-left CUP took less than 5 percent, but together, that was enough for this trio to win a majority, claiming 70 of 135 seats. Consequently, separatists have won majorities in both 2017 and 2015 despite taking just 48 percent of the vote both times, thanks to a variant of proportional representation that inadvertently favors pro-independence parties.
While the fact that only 48 percent of voters favored pro-independence parties might seem like a rejection of the separatists' actions in recent months, explicitly pro-unionist parties didn't actually win more votes. The regional affiliate of the left-wing Podemos took 9 percent, and they favor self-determination for the Catalan people in a legally valid referendum. Furthermore, while opponents of independence had argued that low turnout in the October vote (which they'd boycotted) demonstrated limited enthusiasm for the separatists, turnout in this election was a record 82 percent, showing that the independence movement is indeed a big draw.
Unfortunately, this messy election ordeal won't resolve the crisis anytime soon, as Rajoy's national government appears unlikely to make major compromises with any new pro-secession government in what is one of Spain's wealthiest regions. And even the pro-independence camp could have trouble forming a new government given its constituent parties' vast ideological differences on other issues.
Asia
● Nepal – parliament (Nov. 26 & Dec. 7)
In late 2017, Nepal held its first parliamentary elections since the end of a decade-long civil war in 2006, the abolition of the monarchy in 2008, and the promulgation (after much delay) of a new constitution and a federal system of government in 2015. This election was for a bicameral parliament with a directly elected lower house and an upper house chosen largely by the country's newly elected state legislatures. The all-important lower chamber used a combination of single-member districts and a parallel system of proportional representation, but the proportional seats importantly don't account for disparities between the popular vote and district-level outcomes. This new system thus gives the biggest parties a bonus in terms of the numbers of seats they're awarded compared to their proportional vote support.
The actual elections saw a resounding landslide for an alliance of two communist parties: The Unified Marxist-Leninist Communist Party took a 44 percent plurality of seats with 33 percent of the vote, and the Maoist Centre Communist Party, which fought against the government during the civil war, won 19 percent of the seats with 14 percent of the vote. Together, the alliance will hold a decisive 63 percent of all seats and also has control of most of the state legislatures, giving them an advantage in the upper chamber, too.
The center-left Nepali Congress, which has led the government for most of the last two decades, will become the main opposition party after winning just under one-third of the proportional votes and a quarter of the seats. Two smaller center-left parties, drawing their support largely from voters with Indian ancestry in southern Nepal, combined for the remaining 10 percent of the vote and 12 percent of the seats, leaving the opposition fractured.
The communists are likely to align Nepal more closely with China in a pivot away from the Nepali Congress' preference for stronger ties to India, which has proved contentious in the past. China has invested millions in Nepal, while India provoked a humanitarian crisis in 2015 when it imposed an economic blockade after ethnic groups in parts of southern Nepal protested the new constitution. These events, and the general low level of economic development in a country that was struck by a catastrophic series of earthquakes in 2015, may have contributed to the communists' decisive victory.
Unusually, Nepal's two communist parties have both participated in previous governments, and observers don't expect them to try to establish the sort of totalitarian single-party state that was the hallmark of 20th Century communist regimes. Consequently, the relatively smooth handling of the fledgling Nepali republic's first democratic election is a positive sign for hopes that its democracy will grow more entrenched and prevent a return to violence.
Sub-Saharan Africa
● Liberia – presidential runoff (Dec. 26)
After two devastating civil wars in the 1990s, Liberia is witnessing its first peaceful transition of power in over 70 years. Sen. George Weah of the Congress for Democratic Change (CDC), a former star soccer player, won the country's presidential run-off with 61.5 percent of the vote, defeating incumbent Vice President Joseph Boakai of the centrist Unity Party.
After leading the first round with 38 percent, Weah had to wait for an legal challenge from third place finisher Charles Brumskine, which delayed the run-off election from earlier November until later December. Weah will succeed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman elected head of state in Africa. Sirleaf had provided stability and peace during her twelve years in power, but frustration over corruption and the lack of economic improvement has built in recent years.
Central America/Caribbean
● Costa Rica – president & legislature (Feb. 4 & April 1)
Costa Ricans will head to the polls on Jan. 4 to elect their next president and all 57 members of their proportionally elected unicameral legislature. If no presidential candidate tops 40 percent of the vote, there will be a runoff. Term limits bar incumbent President Luis Guillermo Solis from running for a second consecutive term, but a far-reaching corruption scandal has rendered his center-left Citizens' Action Party deeply unpopular anyway.
Central American countries like Costa Rica are often notoriously difficult to poll accurately. However, recent surveys suggest that two of the leading candidates to make it into a runoff include Antonio Alvarez of the centrist National Liberation Party and Rodolfo Piza of the center-right Social Christian Unity Party, whose two parties had long dominated the political landscape until Solis' 2014 victory. Right-leaning populist Juan Diego Castro of the small National Integration Party also stands a good chance of making it to the runoff, but it's unclear if the anti-establishment Castro can prevail in a second round. Regardless of the presidential outcome, the legislature will likely remain fragmented among several parties, making dramatic policy changes difficult.
● Honduras – president & legislature (Nov. 26)
In a questionable and highly disputed election, incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernández was declared the winner by the Honduran electoral commission, which is run by members of his own National Party. According to figures published by the commission, Hernández won 43 percent of the vote to competitor Salvador Nasralla's 41 percent. The Economist analyzed the results and found them highly problematic. The Organization of American States (a pan-American organization devoted to promoting regional solidarity) has called for new elections due to these widespread irregularities.
Hernández's National Party has previously used its control of the Honduran legislature to install new Supreme Court Justices, who, in a deeply troubling move, then overturned a ban on presidents running for re-election in the Honduran constitution. Given this backdrop, it's far from clear whether a free and fair election can take place in Honduras while Hernández and his party are in power.
South America
● Chile – president and legislature (Nov. 19 & Dec. 17)
Conservative former President Sebastián Piñera won election to a second term, following outgoing center-left President Michelle Bachelet; eight years ago, the exact same transition took place, as Chilean presidents cannot serve consecutive terms. Piñera won his run-off by a wider than expected margin against center-left candidate Alejandro Guillier, 55 to 45. Guillier's 45 percent performance was a disappointment for the left, as three left-of-center candidates had combined for nearly 49 percent of the vote in the first round.
Dissatisfaction on the left during Bachelet's recent term sparked a fracture of the country's broad left/center-left coalition and likely caused depressed turnout in the runoff, which followed a split between Guillier and left-wing candidate Beatriz Sánchez in the initial vote. Piñera also attempted to tone down his conservative views during the runoff, proposing a public pension system and an expansion of free education. But having served as president before, Piñera is a relatively known quantity and is likely to focus on cutting taxes and regulation for businesses.
Calendar of KEY International Elections in 2018
● Below we present a calendar of key 2018 elections in countries whose elections are, by and large, free and fair, such as France or India. We also include some countries 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, such as Iran or Venezuela. We do not list countries with entirely un-free sham elections, like Russia.
Sources: Wikipedia, Maximiliano Herrera, news reports