The end of 2022 brings with it a host of campaign seasons across the planet, set to change the way major states are governed and how they interact with each other.
Below, five of the most consequential elections to look forward to in 2023 and how the races stand as the new year makes its grand entrance.
Nigeria
Africa’s largest economy is set to experience the first major presidential election of 2023 on February 25. Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari – a military dictator in the 1980s who rebranded as an anti-Boko Haram fighter but has largely failed to deliver on his security promises – will conclude his second term in office and is thus not eligible to run again.
Nigeria has only had elections deemed free and fair since 1999. Despite his past, the elderly Buhari has not made any indications that he will seek to remain in power. He assumed the presidency after predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, who presided over some of the worst of Boko Haram’s violence in the north of the country, became the first incumbent in the nation’s history to accept defeat and step down in 2015. The sequence of peaceful transfers of power and lack of challenges to the election results have resulted in greater public trust in the elections and, thus, a potential for record turnout in February.
This background is crucial because it means Nigeria is headed toward another first in representative democracy: an election in which polls regularly show a third party candidate in the lead. Both Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) and Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) have nominated septuagenarian establishment candidates: 70-year-old former Lagos Gov. Bola Tinubu and 76-year-old former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, respectively.
Both have consistently been losing in polls to Peter Obi, a businessman running under the third party Labour slate. A poll by Nigeria’s ANAP Foundation published on December 22 found Obi, 61, attracting 23 percent of respondents – low, but ten points higher than his closest rival, Tinubu. Abubakar received only ten percent support from respondents, who were asked who they would vote for if the election were held today.
Another 23 percent – the same number who supported Obi – said they preferred not to say whom they voted for, leaving pollsters with insufficient information as to who is leading.
Obi has made restoring security – defeating Boko Haram, its ISIS offshoot, and the jihadist Fulani “bandits” who routinely conduct massacres against Christians in northern Nigeria – and fixing the nation’s economy his priorities:
Fixing the economy and, in particular, the energy sector is a priority for Nigerians and potentially the country’s biggest challenge. While a major oil producer, the Nigerian government makes woefully little from extracting crude oil, a result of both corruption and criminal gangs building illegal offshoot pipelines and simply stealing the fuel. Nigeria has too little refining capacity to make money off of the crude oil it extracts and its infrastructure is collapsing, leading to a nationwide power grid collapse this summer.
Obi’s success will require the public to retain enough trust and enthusiasm for him through the election to offset the convoluted presidential election system. To become president of Nigeria, a candidate must win by both a simple majority of votes and receive more than 25 percent support in 24 of the nation’s 36 states. The failure of any candidate to do so results in a runoff election between the two top candidates – and that, too, is not decided by a simple majority. The candidate with a plurality of votes in the highest number of states wins.
Argentina
Like much of Latin America, Argentina has been stuck in a cycle of electing hardline socialists, tanking its economy, and replacing those socialists with “center-right” technocrats whose failures result in the election of another hardline socialist government. The coalition behind socialist President Alberto Fernández had planned to break the cycle by running Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (no relation), the current vice president and former president of the country – until December, when a court sentenced Fernández de Kirchner to six years in prison for corruption charges.
The meaning of the historic conviction remains to be seen, as the vice president has said she will fight the conviction on appeal, and the reelection of convicted felon Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this year to the presidency of Brazil is a favorable precedent for her – but Fernández de Kirchner has said she is currently not expecting to run for president again in light of the ruling. Her absence leaves a major power void in the leftist establishment of the country, which could benefit the Argentine right.
Just who represents the Argentine right, however, remains a point of substantial dispute in the country. On one side is a center-right coalition known as Juntos por el Cambio (“Together for Change”), which includes Fernández’s predecessor, former President Mauricio Macri. On the other is the Libertarian Party, led largely by economist and Internet phenomenon Javier Milei, whose brand of libertarianism is stridently pro-Donald Trump, anti-China and doing business with communist states generally, and anti-politician. Milei first rose to prominence explaining the benefits of capitalist society and calling politicians “parasites” on television. In November 2021, Milei was elected to Congress on a wave of support for his anti-centrist, right-wing movement that viciously attacked the center-right establishment just as much as Fernández’s administration.
Milei announced his candidacy for president in June. Together for Change is planning a primary that may or may not include Macri. The incumbent president’s Frente por Todos (“Front for All”) is, reportedly, in a tailspin, with top officials lamenting a post-Kirchner power vacuum they need to fill to give voters someone to support.
Argentines go to the polls on October 29.
Pakistan
One of the world’s most violent and chaotic political scenes, it is not even clear when Pakistan will hold its general election, which may lead to a new prime minister in the parliamentary system. Parliament is scheduled to dissolve – a process that triggers the general election – in August. The prime minister then gets 90 days to organize an election, placing the time limit on having one into mid-October.
Pakistan lost its popular Islamist prime minister, Imran Khan, in April to a no-confidence vote that returned the establishment Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party to power. Shehbaz Sharif, brother to the party’s namesake and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, became prime minister, triggering violent mob protests of thousands of Islamist men demanding Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party return to power.
In anticipation of potential elections next year, Khan has been fueling the anti-government sentiment around the country by touring – a campaign he dubbed the “long march,” an echo of Mao’s struggle against the Chinese nationalists – and organizing rallies against the Sharifs. Local elections have resulted in widespread PTI wins, which Khan has used to call for early elections, in vain so far. In August, the Pakistani government charged Khan with “terrorism” for allegedly threatening a judge who sentenced a PTI member during one of his rallies, but the legal action did little to stop Khan’s national tour.
In November, an assassin shot Khan in the leg before the mob that had assembled to see the former prime minister subdued him. This also failed to deter Khan, who delivered a speech against the government in a wheelchair the next day.
Any new election would be a power struggle between the current government, which has tended to balance its interests with stable relations with America, and Khan’s PTI. As prime minister, Khan was notoriously anti-America, openly called al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden a “martyr,” and called for global blasphemy laws imposed by the United Nations. With the Taliban increasingly entrenched in neighboring Afghanistan, both continued PML-N rule and a new PTI government could be serious geopolitical threats – albeit for different reasons.
Turkey
The least competitive election on this list, the 2023 Turkish presidential race is not likely to be especially interesting. Longtime strongman ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan began the traditional process of arresting his most charismatic would-be opponents this month with the imprisonment of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a longtime target of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) regime.
Imamoglu defeated Erdogan’s preferred candidate to win the first mayoral election in the top city in 2019, forcing Erdogan to stage a redo in an attempt to elbow him out of power. The move to annul the first election angered residents, resulting in a larger victory for Imamoglu and a global embarrassment for Erdogan.
The AKP government then proceeded to spend much of Imamoglu’s tenure attempting to charge him with various acts that the Turkish legal system considers crimes – for example, accusing him of disrespecting Sultan Mehmet II, who ruled in the 1400s, in one legal attempt in 2021. The Erdogan government succeeded in imprisoning Imamoglu in December, sentencing him to two and a half years in office – and banning him from political races – for allegedly “defaming” public officials.
The 2023 election is set to mirror the race of 2018, when Erdogan imprisoned popular Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, forcing him to run for president from prison, and handily “defeated” him and other third party candidates.
This election matters because of the lack of outrage in the rest of the world over Erdogan’s continued stranglehold on power. The lack of movement to sanction or otherwise ostracize the dictator is a clear indication that Erdogan has increased his power not just at home, but on the international stage. Turkey is in the privileged position of being both a NATO member nation and enjoying friendly relations with Russia, giving it ideal leverage in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey shot down a Russian jet and a Turkish assailant murdered the Russian ambassador, but Moscow forgave all when Erdogan proposed buying Russian missiles, violating NATO protocol. Erdogan enjoys close relations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and has brokered several agreements to allow Ukrainian grain shipments to leave the country safely. His influence in the war earned him a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to play both sides, presumably for the 2023 edition of the honor.
The likeliest scenario for this election, scheduled for June, is for Erdogan to handily win and use his alleged “popularity” as leverage for more power, both in the Ukraine war theater and at international venues such as the United Nations. The unlikely scenario – a popular revolt launching a yet-to-arise rival into the presidency – would be even more momentous.
Spain
Like Pakistan, Spain uses a parliamentary system, meaning an official date for the 2023 elections has not yet been set. The parliament is mandated to organize general elections by December 10. Under current Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (referred to in Spanish as presidente but functioning as a prime minister under a monarchy), Spain has seen a catastrophic economic collapse, high unemployment, increased insecurity fueled by mass migration, and continues to suffer the consequences of illegal Chinese coronavirus business shutdowns and other policies. Like much of Western Europe, Spain also faces potential energy shortages as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and poor socialist management.
Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) largely subdued a mid-decade challenge from the extreme leftist former party Podemos, which largely collapsed in 2015 – which would presumably give it an advantage against the establishment, center-right Popular Party (PP), which still faces competition from the conservative Vox party. Yet an analysis by the establishment newspaper El País this month suggests that internal unrest against Sánchez could cause the PSOE government to fall in the next elections, giving way to a coalition government joining PP and Vox. Polls published this week show a lead for the PP against the PSOE if the elections were held now – one so narrow that it nears the margin of error, and could easily disappear by the time elections are held.