By Ieva Hofmane (European University Institute) On October 1, 2022, the Latvian general election was held. The results awarded seats in the Saeima, the parliament of the Republic of Latvia, to seven parties, including four newcomers. Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš’ New Unity party has captured almost 19% support, while the opposition Greens and Farmers Union [...]
By Bruno Marino (LUISS, Rome) The result of the 2022 Italian general election was substantially in line with pre-electoral expectations and polls: a clear victory for the right-wing coalition [1] led by Fratelli d’Italia (FdI, Brothers of Italy), led by Giorgia Meloni and also made by Matteo Salvini’s Lega (League) and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia [...]
By Jonathan Polk (Lund University) The Social Democratic Party received the most votes in the Swedish parliamentary election held on 11 September 2022.[1] The Social Democrats, in government since 2014, even expanded the party’s vote share (30.3%) from the previous election in 2018 by 2 percentage points. Yet the focus of attention in Sweden has [...]
By Alenka Krašovec (University of Ljubljana) Introduction On 24 April 2022, after a decade of elections being called early, regular elections were again held in Slovenia. The country has had a PR electoral system in place since the democratic transition with quite a low threshold (4% since 2000) and so coalition governments are indeed normal. [...]
By Jan Rovny (Science Po, Paris) The French 2022 legislative elections produced a national assembly without an absolute majority — a first in the history of the French 5th Republic — while a broad left-wing alliance, and the radical right Rassemblement National were the main electoral beneficiaries. Given the rise of these political fringes, and [...]
By Roderick Pace (University of Malta) Malta’s Partit Laburista (Labour Party, PL) won a third general election in a row, with a significant margin over its main rival the Partit Nazzjonalista (Nationalist Party, PN). The election was held on the 26 March 2022. Several months before, public opinion polls by national newspapers had consistently predicted [...]
By Marta Vuković (City, University of London) Election background and party programs In Serbia, parliamentary, presidential, and in some municipalities, including the capital, Belgrade, local elections were held on Sunday, April 3rd. Parliamentary snap elections came less than two years after the last elections that were held in June 2020 when the ruling party won [...]
By Bálint Mikola (CEU PhD graduate, independent researcher) While for an external observer, it might have appeared as if this year’s Hungarian general elections would surely mean the end of 12 years of a semi-authoritarian regime that has become isolated within the EU, things looked very different from a domestic perspective. Even if the populist [...]
By Susana Coroado (University of Lisbon) Against all the expectations created during the electoral campaign, the 2022 Portuguese snap election ended in an absolute majority to the ruling Socialist Party (PS), who increased five percentage points and eleven more members of parliament in comparison with the 2019 elections. Its partners in a leftist coalition, the [...]
By Teodora Yovcheva (University of Sofia) On Sunday 14th November, Bulgarians went to the polling stations for the third time in eight months. This was the result of two elections, after which the political forces could not agree on government formation. The April election was the first regular one since 2009. The then incumbent ruling [...]