2024 was one of the busiest years in politics in regards to elections and 2025 is likely to bring more contentious elections
Belarus
Voters will head to the polls in Belarus to elect a president in January. The election will be neither free nor fair. The country’s opposition warns that the election “will be an exercise in ‘self-reappointment’ of [Aleksander] Lukashenko and a staged attempt to legitimize his continued rule without genuine competition.” That’s also the view in Europe and the United States.
The main question hanging over this vote is whether it will produce mass protests similar to those that followed the country’s last sham presidential election in 2020. Members of the European Parliament charge that, since 2020, “Tens of thousands of peaceful protesters have been arrested and nearly 1,300 political prisoners, including opposition political figures, are still kept in Belarusian detention facilities.” Tens of thousands more have been forced to flee the country.
Germany
On Nov. 6, deep ideological differences over economic reform broke up Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government, a development that allowed Germany, a country in economic crisis, to move up elections from September 2025 to February. A key question is whether the vote will produce a winner with a strong enough mandate to make the tough political choices needed to restore vitality to Europe’s largest economy.
But the thorny subject of immigration also hangs over the scene, especially after a Saudi Arabian national carried out a deadly mid-December terror attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg.
The far-right Alternative for Germany party has surged in recent years with an anti-immigration platform, and now polls at nearly 20%, ahead of Scholz’s Social Democrats, and second only to the conservative Christian Democratic Union. Elon Musk’s endorsement could well boost the party further.
Scholz will lead a caretaker government until the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, elects a new chancellor in April or May. If the CDU maintains its lead, party chief Friedrich Merz would be the probable next chancellor.
Australia
This year, Australians will go to the polls for the first time since 2022, when the Labour Party ended nine years of dominance by the conservative Liberal Party. While in power, Labour has passed major climate legislation, deftly walked the line of preserving Australia’s deep economic ties to China while pushing back on Beijing’s regional assertiveness, and imposed a landmark, and popular, social media ban for minors.
But none of that is the main issue for Australians, which is the economy. And here the Labour Party has struggled, earning terrible marks for rising housing costs, a top concern for more than 90% of voters, according to one industry poll. A flurry of housing legislation in recent months has been too little, too late. The bad vibes extend to wage growth too, even though salaries have grown faster than inflation for the past year.
Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese nor his main opponent, Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton , is well-liked, meaning Australians are choosing between unpopular options. Whoever wins could easily wind up with a minority government, leaving Australians with a weak government that may be challenged to address big problems
The Philippines
The last two years have seen a radical redirection of Manila’s foreign policy as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — the son of the strongman by the same name who ruled the archipelago from 1965-1986 — moves away from China and toward its traditional ally, the US. But this shift has caused a major rift with Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, and it’s making the upcoming midterm election look like a dynastic knife fight.
Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte, is Marcos’ vice president, and relations between the two are frosty to say the least. During a November speech, she said, “This country is going to ■■■■ because we are led by a person who doesn’t know how to be a president and who is a liar,” and then addressed alleged threats to her life by seeming to suggest that she’d arrange retaliatory assassinations of her own.
She’s denied that her comments represent a threat, but she now faces three impeachment complaints — over the threats, alleged misuse of funds, and violating the constitution.
Argentina
Has the pain been worth it? That, in many ways, is the most basic question on the ballot as Argentina heads into midterm elections in October for half the lower house and a third of the senate.
The “pain,” of course, is anarcho-capitalist President Javier Milei’s radical “chainsaw” policy-of gutting public spending and regulations to address decades of economic mismanagement, triple-digit inflation, and chronic debt crises.
So far, Milei has proven many of the haters wrong. The economy, Latin America’s third largest, emerged from recession in late 2024. Inflation has fallen from 25% per month to less than 3%. Economists expect the economy to grow as much as 5% in 2025.