Antonio Lacerda / EPA
Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany
Some are expected, others not so much, but the results of these 5 elections will all impact the world. Here are the countries you should look at next year.
The next 12 months do not promise the abundance of elections that we saw in 2024, when countries that are home to around half of the world’s population went to the polls, recalls .
Still, voters will vote in several important elections throughout the year — and many of the themes persist: the impact of inflationthe rise of populist right and the consequences of war in Europe and the Middle East.
Only a fool or a charlatan will try to predict the future, so it is usually best to avoid election predictions.
Instead, he asked experts from five countries — Canada, Germany, Chile, Belarus and the Philippines — to explain what’s at stake when those nations go to the polls.
Belarus (January 26)
Alexander Lukashenko, Europe’s longest-serving authoritarian ruler, will run for office on January 26, 2025 — and is not expected to lose.
In the next elections, there will be no real opposition to Lukashenkowho has governed the country since 1994.
Four other candidates are the president of the Liberal Democratic Party, Aleh Haidukevich, who ran in the 2020 elections but withdrew his candidacy in favor of Lukashenko; Hanna Kanapatskaya, former MP, businesswoman and candidate for the 2020 Belarusian presidential election; Aliaksandr Khizhnyak, chairman of the Republican Labor and Justice Party; and Siarhei Syrankou, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Communist Party.
But they all expressed support for Lukashenko and his main policies.
Current conditions in Belarus do not allow free and fair elections to be held. Belarusians living abroad will not be able to vote. Following mass protests in the 2020 elections, Belarusian authorities stopped setting up polling stations in diplomatic missions.
That year, protesters claimed widespread support for Lukashenko and argued that the majority of people effectively supported him. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, her main opposition rivalwho currently leads the opposition in exile in Lithuania.
The repression continues following the 2020 protests, with more than 1,200 political prisoners currently detained. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Belarusians have fled the country.
If Lukashenko wins the 2025 presidential election, Belarus is likely to remain a key ally of Russia, welcoming Russian nuclear weapons and serving as a launch pad for military operations, as seen in the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Germany (February 23)
The German public knew they would be called upon to vote in the 2025 federal election. But the recent collapse of the German coalition government means the vote will take place on February 23 — seven months ahead of schedule.
In fact, after weeks of discussions on the budget, the chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner in early November. As a result, Lindner’s Free Democrats left the coalition, meaning that the two remaining parties – Scholz’s Social Democrats, or SPD, and the Greens – no longer have a majority in the German parliament. The chancellor had no alternative but to resort to early elections. And after lose the vote of confidence on December 16Scholz achieved this result.
The February elections will take place in a particularly difficult global context for Germany. In addition to the ongoing war in Ukraine, which is affecting Berlin’s diplomatic and economic standing in Europe, Germany is also sandwiched between China’s continued industrial competition and Donald Trump’s perspective. All this is worsening Germany’s internal difficulties.
Yours economy has been locked down since the arrival of Covid-19 and the country faces a second year of recession.
Internally, the different parties will discuss the hot topics of migration and financing greater investments in the country. But spending more will be politically difficult—the constitutional “debt brake” Germany currently obliges the government to maintain a balanced budget.
Polls suggest that Scholz faces a major challenge to remain chancellor. His approval rating has been dismal and his party is far behind the Christian Democratic Unioncenter-right, and its sister party, the Christian Social Union. The SPD is in a tight race for second place with the far-right party Alternative for Germany, hoping for his recent successes in the federal elections.
Forming a stable coalition capable of obtaining a majority may prove to be a challenge.
Philippines (May 12)
Since the end of President Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, presidents of the Philippines have served single six-year terms, but haveand face midterm elections in which Filipinos elect local officials, district representatives to the lower house, and 12 nationally elected senators — 2025 is one of those years.
On paper, these Senate elections amount to a referendum on the incumbent President. However, it is more accurate to think of them as demonstrating the impressive control that the incumbent president has over political machines. Most senatorial candidates who win have the support of the president.
And there’s no reason to think that this dynamic won’t prevail in the May 2025 elections. Polls, which in recent years have been more accurate in the Philippines than in the US, show that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s bets are on the upswing. for the Senate they can win up to nine or 10 of the 12 open places.
This fact will be important for Marcos Jr., who needs to consolidate his power in the midst of a feud with Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, the previous occupant of the presidential palace who presided over a relentless and bloody drug crackdown.
A Marcos-dominated Senate would increase the likelihood of a conviction if Duterte were subject to impeachment proceedings for alleged mismanagement of confidential funds.
A conviction would not only remove her from office but also bar her from running for president in 2028. And a restoration of Duterte’s vindictive power could spell trouble for the Marcoses — one of the most corrupt families in Asiawith many skeletons in the closet.
Marcos Jr. must bury the Duterte dynasty while he can. In a country like the Philippines, where voters are often forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, such a resolution would be welcomed by many.
Canada (Before October 20)
It appears increasingly likely that federal elections in Canada will be held well before the constitutionally mandated deadline of October 20, 2025.
The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who was already doing very poorly in the polls before a series of shocking events, it now faces the possible — or even likely — fall of its fragile coalition government.
Trudeau, recently insulted by US President-elect Donald Trump as the “governor” of Canada and threatened with a 25% tariff, suffered another shock on December 16: Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned due to irrevocable differences on fundamental political issues.
Trudeau could become the latest political casualty among global leaders committed to the priorities of the contemporary left rather than the populist right.
The Liberal leader is a long-time supporter of the cultural left and an advocate of strong action in the face of the threat of climate change. The result has been a huge level of public spending and growing deficits.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, Trudeau’s likely main rival in the 2025 election, has built a huge lead in polls, which appears to be based on public anger at high inflation and other material shortcomings.
Trudeau is being targeted by attacks inside and outside Canada. Trump demands that Canada move away from what he called U.S. exploitation in trade and calls on Canada to strengthen border security in particular and defense spending in general.
The next election may even be about the identity of Canada itself. Will Trudeau remain in power and continue to implement a socialist agenda after the election? Or will Poilievre win and move the country towards a more conservative populism?
Or, once again, will another coalition government be formed, with a set of policies that end up not pleasing anyone?
A pressure on Trudeau to resign appears to be approaching an overwhelming level. Time will tell — and perhaps very soon.
Chile (November 16)
The presidential elections in Chile will take place on November 16, 2025. Given their — which means that candidates need 50% plus one of the votes to be elected, something that no presidential candidate has managed to do in the first round since 1993 — it is likely that a second round will be held on December 14th. The second round will be contested between the first two candidates.
The acting president, Gabriel Boric is prevented from running for a second consecutive term. Elected in 2021 at the age of 35 — which makes him the youngest president ever in Chile — Boric has had great difficulty putting into practice the program of his Frente Amplio, a left-wing coalition with a platform of political and social changes and comprehensive economics.
This is largely due to the fact that the coalition does not have a parliamentary majority.
Gabriel Boric,
In fact, Boric’s Chile has the dubious distinction of being the only country that rejected not one, but two constitutional texts submitted to the electorate — one for being too left-wing, the other for being too right-wing — placing Chile in a constitutional dead end.
However, after several years of unrest that began with a – the most serious in Chile’s two centuries of independent history – and continued with the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Chile hard, the country has now recovered a modicum of normality. political and economic. The is increasing, but also the crimewhich has become a major concern for voters.
Following a Latin American — and global — trend, most surveys point to a probable opposition victorythe right-wing coalition Chile Vamos, led by the former mayor of Providencia, Evelyn Matthei, who ran for president and lost in 2013 to Michelle Bachelet.
The coalition in power has had difficulty presenting a strong candidate to face Matthei. Two of the most likely — Bachelet herself and Tomás Vodanovic, mayor of Maipú, a suburb of Santiago — have indicated that they are not interested, and a third, Interior Minister Carolina Tohá, is hampered by difficulties felt in controlling the situation of the law and of the order.
Right finger, a coalition in power did better than expected in the October 2024 local and regional elections and an opposition victory in 2025 is by no means a given.
