Earlier this month, I posted about international elections — specifically India, South Africa, and the U.K.  At that time, I overlooked two elections, and one of those two elections has triggered another election which is taking place today.

So we start with the elections for the European Parliament.  It is easy to overlook the elections for the European Parliament.  There are no truly Europe-wide parties.  Instead, the national parties align themselves into blocks in the European Parliament with block membership being somewhat fluid.  More importantly, many of the major decisions are made by the Council of Ministers (i.e. the representatives of the national government) with a consensus required for action.  As a result, the election tends to produce a large protest vote against the individual national governments with the opposition parties doing well with voters not paying much attention to the issues that Parliament does have to decide.  More significantly, none of the blocks has anything close to a majority of seats. There were weird country-specific shuffles with unaffiliated members now being the second largest group in the European Parliament behind a block that is generally center-right.

However, the main impact of the election was in France.  Heading into the election the two of the largest parties in France were tied.  However, there was a big swing between the (minority) government center-left party and the ultra-nationalist party which ended up with over 35% of the French seats.  Which moves us to the new election.

After the results for the European Parliament were announced, the French President called a snap election for parliament.  While France uses a proportional representation system for the European Parliament, it uses single-member districts for the French Parliament with an interesting twist of a run-off provision.  In the first round, it takes 50% of the actual vote to win as long as those votes exceed 25% of the registered voters.  In the past, turnout was near 60% of the registered voters meaning that it only took 50% of the actual vote to win.  The past several elections, the national turnout has dipped below 50% which means that there will be districts where it will take more than 50% of the actual vote to win in the first round.  If nobody wins, the top two candidates and any candidate who gets more votes than 12.5% of the registered voters will advance.  Here, again, turnout is key.  At 50% turnout in a district, it takes 25% to make the runoff.  At that number, there is a chance that the third-placed candidate might make the runoff.  But if turnout dips below 40%, it becomes almost impossible for the third-placed candidate to make the runoff.  Whether a third candidate makes the runoff is very significant.  Heading into the elections, there are three main coalitions — a left-wing group (which is actually the second largest party in the outgoing parliament), the ultranationalist party, and the governing center-left party.  The traditional center-right parties have suffered serious losses.  If polls are to be believed, the ultranationalist party is likely to do well in the first round (with voting to take place on June 30).  But the ultranationalists have historically done poorly in the second round as voters coalesce behind whatever candidate is opposing the ultranationalist candidate.  It is unclear if that is about to change.  One of the traditional center-right party (which traces its roots to Charles De Gaule) has split into two factions — one which wants to form an electoral alliance with the ultranationalist party and one which recognizes that ideas of that ultranationalist party is not consistent with the principles on which the French Republic is based.  If the past is any prediction, then only a handful of seats will be decided in the first round.  Almost all of the seats will advance to the runoff.  The runoff is scheduled for July 7.

The other election that was missed four weeks ago was actually the most significant for the U.S.  But our media tends to focus more on Europe rather than on our neighbor to the south.  Mexico held its elections  on June 2.  Likke the U.S., Mexico has a presidential-congressional system.  The big difference between the U.S. and Mexico is the presidential term which is six years rather than four and the fact that the incumbent president is ineligible to run for reelection.  Effectively, a Mexican president is a lame duck on the first day in office.  Like in the U.S., all senators serve for a six-year term, but, unlike the U.S. all senators run in the same election at the same time as the presidential election.  There is a mid-term election (three years into the term) in which members of the Chamber of Deputies (the equivalent of our House of Representatives) stands for election.  In other words, a president who does well when running for election will have decent majorities in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies in the first three years of the term but could face a significantly more hostile Chamber of Deputies in the latter part of the term.  Additionally, while a president can’t run for a second term, he can influence (and up until now it has always been a he) who his party picks to run in the next election.  So a popular president can command loyalty from his party well into his term, but an unpopular president is likely to face resistance from within his own party as potential successors jockey for position.

The Mexican elections reflected a somewhat common feature of many countries, the collapse of the traditional parties and the rise of newer personality driven parties.  The parties that were the three main parties in 2012 are now united in a coalition against the current governing party which was formed when the previous nominee of the established leftist party split to run as the candidate of his own party (which is now the governing party).  This coalition of the established parties got trounced as Mexico elected its first female president and her coalition ended up with just under two-thirds of the seats in the Senate and almost three-quarters of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies.  The just under two-thirds in the Senate is significant because it limits the ability of the governing party to amend the constitution as they will need at least some support from the opposition party.  While the current government is a populist party, it is a left-wing populist party.  And that will be significant for dealing with the U.S.  There has been some ability of the Biden Administration to get things done.  But the fact that the position of the Mexican government is almost uniformly opposed to everything that Trump wants, relations would get very chilly if Trump were to win in November.  Not that Mexico is falling over itself to give Biden what he is asking for.  The governing party is definitely a social democratic “Mexico First” party which has its own list of priorities in terms of what it wants from the U.S. in exchange for concessions.  But Biden is willing to at least talk about those issues.

Now back to the other elections that we mentioned four weeks ago.  In South Africa, the final official results were similar to where the early count stood at that time.  The African National Congress, for the first time ever, lost its majority and was forced to enter into a national unity government with the largest opposition party (to avoid the need for both to negotiate with multiple smaller parties).  Time will tell if this coalition will be workable.

In India, the expectation was that the governing alliance, led by the Hindu nationalist BJP party would expand its majority.  The opposite happened.  The governing party lost its majority and now depends on the other parties in its alliance for a majority.  Even then, that alliance only has a 293-250 majority which is probably enough to govern.  No one party in the alliance has enough seats to take the government down, but with 53 seats being held by the non-BJP members of the alliance, it is possible for the government to lose its majority.  Whether this slimmer majority results in more centrist and less religiously-divisive policies over the next term remains to be seen.

And that leaves us with the U.K.  Four weeks ago, the formal election was just starting.  (Like in the U.S., the informal election never ends.)  Over the last four weeks, very little has changed.  If anything, the highlight of the of the campaign was a question at the head-to-head town hall-type debate between the leaders of the two main parties about whether the two leaders were the best that their parties can do.   It’s not just in the U.S. where voters are unhappy with their choices.   Since the election is on Thursday, and we just happen to have our own holiday on that day allowing us politics junkies to spend the day and evening following the BBC feed, we will have more on that election on Thursday.