We're back in Bulgaria for the third time this year. Following two inconclusive parliamentary elections which featured the rise of new anti-corruption parties, new legislative elections were held alongside presidential elections. In the presidential ballot, incumbent Rumen Radev came tantalisingly close to winning outright in the first round. While in the parliamentary contest, new party We Continue the cChange swept into first place with prime ministerial candidate Kiril Petkov looking more likely to succeed in forming a government than in the previous two elections. 

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Japanese elections tend not to be close run affairs thanks to the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Last month's election was no different, with the LDP and its ally Komeito cruising to an easy victory under new prime minister Fumio Kishida. We're joined by Professor Amy Catalinac of NYU to discuss the secrets of the LDP's dominance over Japanese politics, and the fragmented opposition parties that challenged it without much success. 

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This week we're discussing out-of-country voting- what it is, why it occurs and how it's used. Diaspora voting has become an ever more widely used feature in recent decades, with the majority of countries making some provision for it. We run through the different ways countries can go about it, as well as a plethora of examples of where out-of-country has had interesting repercussions on elections. 

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On 10th October Iraqis went to the polls to elect a new Council of Representatives. The election featured a new electoral system, sectarian and protest politics and a large-scale boycott. We're joined by Dr. Marsin Alshamary of the Brookings Institution to discuss the vote, the mass protests which preceded it, the boycott protest leaders called for, and break down who did well and who did badly of Iraq's multitudinous parties and alliances. 

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Parliamentary elocutions in Czechia last week saw the unexpected victory of two anti-government alliances, who together will now have a majority to oust populist prime minister Andrej Babiš. We're joined by Dr. Sean Hanley of UCL to discuss how the Czech party system fell apart, what sort of party Babiš' ANO is, and exactly what we mean when we say the mayors did significantly better than the pirates. 

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Iceland held parliamentary elections on September 25th (sorry its taken so long), which saw remarkably little change for a country that has experienced a decade of electoral volatility. The unlikely-sounding three party coalition of eco-socialists, agrarians and conservatives led by the Green Left Movement's Katrín Jakobsdóttir maintained its majority in this election, and relatively few seats changed hands. We dig into Iceland's now fractured party system, and how politics works in one of Europe's smallest democracies.

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The blog for this episode can be found here.

It's the big one...we're breaking down the results of the German election we previewed in the summer. As Olaf Sholz's SPD stages a remarkable comeback (vis a vis their polling earlier in the term at least), the Greens also surge and the CDU/CSU tumble to their lowest scores ever. We dig into what these results mean for the parties, and the likely coalition arrangements that could emerge from the ongoing negotiations.

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