Back in town

I’m back from holiday, ready to analyse the recent happenings in the electoral world. It’s been an eventful month and a half, especially the last fortnight, which has seen six big elections: South Africa, India, Mexico, Bulgaria, Belgium and the European Union. In addition, two of the G7 countries have called early elections – Britain for 4 July and France for 30 June and 7 July.

Over the next couple of weeks I intend to work through those eight; some of them might seem to be no longer newsworthy, but I think there are important things to say in each case, and some of the results were quite unexpected. Part of the task will be to explore some common themes between them rather than treating them as isolated events. The fact that there’s been time for the dust to settle a bit might also help in working out just what’s going on.

So stay tuned: we’ll start later today with South Africa.