In last year’s review post, in relation to the return of Donald Trump, I said “How well the world can weather the storm looks like being the big story of next year, and beyond.” We have weathered it to the extent that the world is still here; for that we can be grateful. But a world in which the three great military powers are all hostile to liberal democracy is never going to be a safe place.
Yet as Adam Smith once remarked, “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” The United States has not descended into bankruptcy or dictatorship and shows no signs of doing so in the medium term. The guardrails of democracy are under stress but they have mostly held so far; it is still possible that the situation can be retrieved before the world slides into catastrophe. Or so we must hope.
War and bloodshed continued in many places, notably in Ukraine, where Trump’s efforts to impose a Russia-friendly peace have so far come to nothing. Peace of a sort was arrived at in Gaza, after a brief regional escalation in the middle of the year, but terrorists remain in power both there and in Israel itself. And an end to the carnage in Sudan looks as far away as ever.
In electoral terms, 2025 was never going to be as big as the bumper year of 2024, but there was still a lot of activity. Six of the G20 countries went to the polls, although one was only for the upper house and another was just the legislature in a presidential system. In 2024 voters were in an ornery mood, with incumbents doing badly across the board, but this year voter anger was more clearly directed: they didn’t like Trumpists.
Trump-allied parties and candidates did badly almost everywhere outside of South America, and even there the record was mixed. That alone won’t be enough to save the world, since the whole point of an anti-democratic movement is that it doesn’t really care what voters think. But it reminds us, contrary to the usual media narrative, that Trumpism rests on a narrow popular base. It prospers not from its own strength, but from the weakness and complicity of its opponents.
So here’s my regular list of the year’s top ten elections, in chronological order, with brief summaries and links to my original reports:
23 February, Germany (parliament). An early election produced the expected result of a coalition between centre-right and centre-left, but both are at near-historic lows as they fight off the challenge of the far-right. New chancellor Friedrich Merz tries to be both anti-Trump and anti-immigrant, a difficult combination to sustain. The far right also won a presidential election in neighboring Poland, and a “populist” coalition won power later in the year in Czechia.
28 April, Canada (parliament). Perhaps the year’s most striking repudiation of Trump came in the US’s northern neighbor, whose Liberal government had looked dead in the water. But new leader Mark Carney made Trumpism the issue and won easily, with the opposition leader losing his own seat. Even closer to home, later in the year the city of New York elected a self-styled “democratic socialist” as mayor, comfortably beating a Trump-endorsed Democrat-turned-independent.
3 May, Australia (parliament). The one that most readers will remember best. Opposition leader Peter Dutton had doubled down on his party’s Trumpy direction, and it didn’t go over well with the voters; the Labor government got a 3.2% swing in its favor and a substantially increased majority. Long-serving state governments were re-elected in Western Australia and Tasmania, although each lost some ground.
4 & 18 May, Romania (president). Last year’s election was annulled after the first-round leader was disqualified. This time around the far right again led the first round, but was beaten by a clear margin in the runoff by the liberal mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan. The centre-right won power in Portugal on the same day, and pro-Europeans were also successful in Albania and Moldova.
3 June, South Korea (president). Right-wing president Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached and removed from office after trying to stage a coup, and the centre-left’s Lee Jae-myung won the election to replace him with a margin of nearly three million votes. No such democratic opportunity in Singapore or Hong Kong, where incumbents were returned in patently unfair contests.
20 July, Japan (upper house). After surviving a near-death experience last year, the centre-right government went backwards in elections for the House of Councillors. That cost prime minister Shigeru Ishiba his job, and his party chose Sanae Takaichi to replace him, making her the country’s first female leader. Mid-term elections in the Philippines were also seen as a setback for the government.
16 September, Malawi (president & legislature). It was quite a big year for African elections, some more democratic than others. Malawi was one where the voters, having succeeded in turfing out a long-standing president on the previous occasion, decided to vote him back again. Something similar happened the following month in the Seychelles. Less genuine contests were held in Burundi, Gabon, Cameroon and Egypt, among others.
26 October, Argentina (legislature). Controversial “libertarian” president Javier Milei was not up for election, but the fate of his program was at stake in mid-term congressional elections, and he won a big vote of confidence. Earlier in the year, Daniel Noboa was re-elected as president in Ecuador and Rodrigo Paz won in Bolivia; all were defeats for the left, but none of the three quite fitted the Trumpist mold.
29 October, Netherlands (parliament). Another big defeat for the Trumpist agenda after far-right leader Geert Wilders broke up the previous government. He paid the electoral price, as did the right-liberals who had collaborated with him: left-liberal leader Rob Jetten is expected to be the next prime minister. The centre-left also did well in Norway, and an independent leftist won the presidency in Ireland.
16 November & 14 December, Chile (president & legislature). The one clear Trumpist victory for the year, with the election of far-right candidate José Antonio Kast as president at his second attempt. Chilean voters have got into the habit of alternating the two sides in power, but that’s a dangerous move when one side is hostile to democracy. A Trump-endorsed candidate also won in Honduras, although only by the skin of his teeth.
That’s a wrap for 2025; I hope you’ve found some good in the year in your lives. Best wishes for the new year, and we’ll be back tomorrow or Friday to preview some of what to expect for 2026.
The World is Not Enough 