As long-time readers of this site know, I periodically check-in on what is going on in other democracies.  As much as some Americans think that other countries should just do what the U.S. demands, leaders in other countries face internal restraints on what they can do.  In democracies, those constraints come the voters and the desire to win the next election.  As such, elections in other countries matter to U.S. foreign policy.  This post will focus on three countries with elections (either on-going or about to occur).

Up first is South Africa.  In South Africa, voting is over and the results are almost final.  What makes South Africa important (other than being the largest democracy in Africa) is that this election represents a crucial turning point for South African democracy.  Since the fall of apartheid, the African National Congress has been the dominant party.  But there comes a point in every democracy when the founding generation either gives way to a younger generation or personality conflicts results in splits within the founders.  At this time, the governing party loses an election.  And the hallmark of a functioning democracy (as much as a certain presidential candidate may disagree) is that the parties accept such a result and there is a peaceful transfer of power.

Based on the results so far (about 99% of the vote has been counted as of the writing of this post), the ANC has only received about 40% of the vote.  While there are some complexities to South African elections due to the use of national and provincial lists, that should result in the ANC getting about 160 seats out of the 400 seats in parliament.  That leaves the ANC as the largest party in parliament but not the majority.  There will need to be coalition talks to choose the new president and the new premiere.  How these talks resolve will lay a foundation for the future of democracy in South Africa.  Will the current president (as demanded by some of the opposition parties) step aside to allow a compromise candidate (but still from the ANC) be chosen or will there be some shenanigans and corrupt deals to keep the incumbent in power.

Up next is India.  India has a unique way of doing elections.  India is so large and has some election security issues that, to assure a secure election, the election actually takes place on different days in different states.  Today is the last of those days and results should be announced early next week.  For the first 40 or 50 years of Indian democracy, the dominant party was the secular Indian National Congress (INC).  In recent years, the dominant party has been the Hindu BJP party.  While India is not on the verge of becoming a theocracy, the BJP certainly has been less than respectful of the religious rights of other religions, particularly Muslims.    It would be a shock if the BJP and its allies did not win a majority of seats and most are projecting that it will gain seats (mostly due to some smaller parties losing some seats).   A solid majority for the BJP will give the current prime minister more authority to continue his policies for a more assertive role for India by giving him the flexibility to be a regional broker in multinational negotiations.

Last up is the United Kingdom.  In recent years, divisions in the governing Conservative Party has resulted in a game of musical chairs in the prime minister’s office (three separate prime ministers since the last election).  That plus the very high rate of inflation in the U.K. has made it look like the Conservative Party was doomed.  (Inflation reached 11% in the U.K. and even now is still above 2%.)  Under U.K. law, the Prime Minister can call an election at any time during the term of Parliament, but Parliament has a maximum term of five years.  As such, it has been expected that there would be an election at some point in the second half of this year (as the latest possible date was January 2025).  That election has now been called for July 4 — a little bit earlier than expected but between the European Soccer Championships (which will still be in progress on July 4), the Olympics, the desire to avoid overlapping the U.S. elections, and not to campaign over the Christmas holidays, there really was not a good choice for an election date.

This election is the first election conducted under the new set of constituency (what we could districts) boundaries.  In the U.K., boundaries are supposed to be reviewed every eight years, but, to be valid, the process of redrawing the lines has to be completed before the election.  If not the process starts over again after the next election.  As a result of disputes about boundaries and two early elections, the last boundary change took place before the 2010 parliamentary elections.  In the U.K., the boundaries are drawn by boundary commissions — one for each of the four “nations” that comprise the U.K.  There are three “protected” constituencies — two in Scotland and one in England — that represent isolated areas that are geographically impossible to combine with other areas to make a proper sized-constituency.  After setting aside those three seats, the remaining 647 seats are allocated to the four nations based on population.  Within England, the boundary commission further allocates England’s seats by region and sub-region.   The key thing to know about the boundary commissions are that they are nonpartisan bureaucratic bodies.  The law sets the criteria for drawing the boundaries.  Since those criteria includes giving some weight to what we would call communities of interest and local boundaries, the public does get a chance to comment on the drafts of boundaries and some adjustments are typically made to the initial boundaries.  Further, the law allows slightly more deviation between the largest and smallest constituency than U.S. law allows, but the goal is still having seats of roughly the same size.  As in the U.S., geography tends to favor right-wing parties.  Urban areas are more left-wing, but in a large metropolitan area, you will have conservative pockets which get their own seat.  Meanwhile rural areas tend to be more conservative with no realistic way of uniting the progressive pockets into a compact and contiguous seat.  But for the disasters that have hit the Conservative Party, the new lines would have helped them keep a majority.  Using the votes from 2019, they would have won several more seats if these lines had been in effect in 2019.

In looking at this election, while — like most of the U.S. — the U.K. uses a first-past-the-post system, the U.K. actually has viable third parties which can contend for and win seats.  In Northern Ireland, none of the British parties run candidates, and there are five or six parties which realistically might win a seat or two.  While some of these parties are seen as loosely affiliated with one of the major British parties, they tend not to join any government coalition which means that — to have an absolute majority, the British parties need to win 326 of the 632 British seats.  Additionally, in both Scotland and Wales, there are nationalist parties (the Scottish Nationalist Party and Alba in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales) that will win some seats (several elections ago, the SNP won almost all of the Scottish seats).  In England, itself, the Liberal Democrats manage to win a significant number of seats.  Additionally, the Green Party tends to be competitive in a handful of seats.  Lastly, on the far right, there is the Reform Party (previously the U.K. Independence Party).  Reform has been a plague on the Conservative Party.  Brexit is a result of the Conservative Party promising a vote on leaving the European Union in an attempt to prevent right-wing voters from defecting to UKIP in 2015.  While the Reform Party is not expected to win any seats, they could be spoilers who take votes away from the Conservative in key “target” seats that allow the seat to flip to Labour or the Liberal Democrats.  While the Liberal Democrats run everywhere, they are particularly strong (i.e. likely to finish in the top two) in southeast and southwestern England where most of the seats traditionally go Conservative.

There are several things of potential interest to look at when election results are reported on July 4.  First, in 2019, the Conservatives (like Trump in 2016) did surprisingly well in denting Labour’s “red wall” in industrialized areas by painting themselves as the protectors of British industry from foreign competition.  How many of those seats flip back to Labour?  Second, how many votes does the Reform Party get and are there any seats in which the Reform Party votes make the difference in the Conservative Party losing the seat?  Third, the SNP has had a rough couple of years as the governing party in Scotland.  Does that weakness allow Labour and the Liberal Democrats to regain seats which they held in Scotland before 2010?  Ultimately, however, the election will come down to how bad the Conservatives do and how well Labour does.  In 2019, the Conservatives won 365 seats on 43.6% of the vote compared to Labour’s 202 seats on 32.1% of the vote.  Current polling has some deviations between polls, but the best numbers for the Conservative Party has Labour getting 43% to the Conservatives 27%.   While it would take a major swing in seats (over 120 seats) for Labour to get a majority, it looks possible at this time if the polls are accurate.  Similarly, it looks possible that the Conservatives are looking at their worst result ever (maybe even fewer than 100 seats and highly likely to be under 200 seats).  By way of comparison, the Conservatives have rarely been under 200 seats and never below 150 seats.