With Congress out until Moscow Mitch deigns to call the Senate back to endless debate gun control legislation before ultimately passing the most minimal bill that the Republicans think they can get away with, it’s a good opportunity to talk about the politics of our allies.

The biggest one for domestic politics is probably the Israeli election.  A mere four months ago, Israel went to the polls and Benjamin Netanyahu eked out a narrow victory.  However, given that Israel uses proportional representation, coming in first is not enough to be prime minister.  And many of the groups that would naturally support a Netanyahu government have conflicting non-negotiable demands.  (The big dispute on the Israeli right is between secular and religious parties.  Current Israeli law exempts religious students from the draft.  The religious parties want to keep this exemption.  The secular parties want to repeal this exemption.)  Because he could not put together a majority behind a unified agenda, Israel is going to have a second election on September 17.  Again, like our own President, Netanyahu has to face allegations of improprieties and could likely be facing criminal charges if he loses.  One of the interesting factors in Israeli politics is the use of joint lists in which various parties agree to run as one list to assure meeting the threshold for winning seats (and to maximize the seats won) with internal agreements based on estimated support determining how any seats won are allocated between the parties.  Not much has changed since April so another narrow Netanyahu win is the most likely result.

In Europe, there are a lot of elections set for the smaller economies — Portugal, Poland, Austria, Croatia — but the big question is the United Kingdom.  After the recent Conservative Party elections, Boris Johnson is serving as Prime Minister, but when Parliament returns from the summer recess the Conservatives and their allies from Northern Ireland will have a 320-319 majority.  However, the United Kingdom is currently scheduled to leave the European Union on Halloween.  Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister because Theresa May could not negotiate a deal for the departure that could obtain the consent of Parliament.  While Johnson is trying to negotiate a new deal, the European Union is not willing to negotiate against itself.  It made concessions in the negotiations with Ms. May and is not willing to agree to move the goalposts (especially as the main problem is the Ireland-Northern Ireland border).  There is a solid bloc of the Conservative Party that is opposed to departing without a deal which could lead to Mr. Johnson losing a “no confidence” vote when Parliament reconvenes.  If there is not a consensus alternative to lead a “national unity”government, early elections (but no sooner than October 31) are likely.  Given that the predominant issue in the UK remains the relation between the UK and the European Union (and that the UK is split down the middle on this issue) and the use of a first-past-the-post system (which means the fact that there are multiple parties on both sides of the divide can lead to weird results in individual constituencies).

Finally, there is what should be getting more attention in the U.S., the elections in our most significant trading partner — Canada.  Despite the economic importance of Canada, Canada is often treated by American politicians as a poor step-child that will do what we want.  There traditionally have been three major national parties in Canada — the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the New Democratic Party.  The Conservative Party used to occupy a space somewhere between the U.S. Republican and Democratic Party (being slightly more liberal than the Democrats on some issues).  Like the U.S. Republican Party, the Conservative Party of Canada has drifted steadily to the right over the past two decades.  However, the Conservative Party (like the Republican Party in the U.S.} tends to be strong in more rural areas — dominating the so-called Prairie Provinces and doing well enough in the rural areas of Ontario and British Columbia.  Additionally, the first-past-the-post system allows the Conservative Party to win some ridings with less than a majority due to the vote splitting between the various left-of-center parties.  The Liberal Party (the current governing party) is somewhat to the left of the U.S. Democratic Party.  The third major party — the New Democratic Party — is a social democratic party.  There are three other parties of note.  At the national level, the Green Party has been growing in strength.  However, like the Green Party in other countries that use a variant of first-past-the-post, the Green Party of Canada has the problem of it’s voters not being concentrated in individual ridings.  It might win more ridings in this election than in past elections, but it’s number of seats will not be proportional to its actual vote total. There is a new national party for this election — the People’s Party. It was formed by the member of parliament who finished second in the Conservative Party’s leadership election.  While there are some differences between it’s announced positions and the positions of the Conservative Party, there are some who view it as merely a personal agenda of its leader who was upset at losing the Conservative Party leadership.  Polling-to-date suggests that the People’s Party will not be a significant factor and may not win any seats.  The last significant party is the Bloc Quebecois . Like in the U.K. (and some other European countries), the Bloc is a regional separatist party (in this case for the sole predominately French-speaking province — Quebec).  It was not that long ago that the Bloc was the leading party in Quebec.  In the past several elections, the national parties have done better and it is unlikely that the Bloc will gain the majority of seats in Quebec.  It is likely however, that the Bloc will win about a dozen (maybe slightly more) seats which could pose a problem.

Right now, polls in Canada are showing a slight lead for the Conservatives.  However, the race is close enough that a significant part of that margin will be wasted votes in rural ridings (in which the Conservatives will gain very large majorities), and that the Liberals may win more seats.   However, particularly depending upon the ability of the Greens to win additional seats (currently holding only one) and how many seats the Bloc gets in Quebec, the most likely result as things stand today is a hung parliament with the Liberals maybe having a slight edge over the Conservatives by one or two seats.  As the election is tentatively scheduled for October 21, the circumstances could still change dramatically as a one or two percent shift (well within the margin of error even without any significant event) could swing a large number of seats that are currently “toss-ups.”  It should be noted that the election date has not yet been formally set and the October 21 date is supposed to be the latest possible date.  (There are some noises being made about postponing it one week to avoid conflict with a religious holiday, but no final decision has been made yet.)  However, Canadian election law creates a 5-7 week period between the issuance of the “writs of election” and the election date.  Thus, at this point in time, the earliest possible election date would be September 23.

While, in Trump World, he commands and the rest of the world bows down to his whim, the real world is different.  Our ability to get our allies to go along with our proposal depends on how those proposals fit within the domestic agenda of the elected leaders of our allies, and their agendas depend upon the results of their elections.  As such, the results of these elections will have an impact on what President Trump can get done in his last sixteen months in office and what the next President will have to do to repair the damage caused by Trump starting in January 2021.