Important elections will take place here in 2022 - in Germany and abroad

In 2022 there will be four state elections in Germany, one of them in North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest German state. Three of the four federal states are currently still governed by the Christian Democrats, one by the SPD. After the success in the federal elections, she wants to further strengthen her power.

Saarland elected a new parliament on March 27th. SPD candidate Anke Rehlinger was clearly ahead of the CDU with Prime Minister Tobias Hans, Greens and FDP just missed the five percent hurdle.

The official end result at a glance:

SPD: 43.5 percent

CDU: 28.5 percent

AfD: 5.7 percent

FDP: 4.8 percent

Greens: 4.99 percent

Left: 2.6 percent

Other: 9.9 percent

Schleswig-Holstein elected a new state parliament on May 8th. Prime Minister Daniel Günther's CDU clearly won the election. The Schleswig-Holstein AfD was the first state association in Germany to miss re-entry into the state parliament. The left also clearly failed at the five percent hurdle.

The official end result at a glance:

CDU: 43.4 percent

SPD: 16 percent

Greens: 18.3 percent

FDP: 6.4 percent

AfD: 4.4 percent

SSW: 5.7 percent

Left: 1.7 percent

Other: 4.2 percent

North Rhine-Westphalia elected a new state parliament on May 15, 2022. The CDU with Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst is the strongest force in the country, the Greens grew the most.

The official end result at a glance:

CDU: 35.7 percent

SPD: 26.7 percent

Greens: 18.2 percent

FDP: 5.9 percent

AfD: 5.4 percent

Left: 2.1 percent

Other: 6.1 percent

On October 9th, the 19th Lower Saxony state parliament will be elected. A total of 6.1 million voters are called upon to cast their votes at the ballot box. In Lower Saxony, a new state parliament is elected every five years.

The SPD currently has a clear lead when it comes to possible prime ministers: incumbent Stephan Weil would prefer 59 percent in a direct election, while his deputy Bernd Althusmann, state leader of the CDU, would prefer only 21 percent. One in five respondents did not answer the question.

Overall, satisfaction with the red-black coalition in the country remains high, even if it has decreased somewhat compared to the previous year. 62 percent stated that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the work of the state government.

infratest dimap, 06.07.2022

SPD: 30 percent

CDU: 27 percent

Greens: 22 percent

FDP: 7 percent

AfD: 6 percent

Left: 3 percent

Other: 5 percent

The right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban celebrated an unexpected triumph in the parliamentary elections in Hungary. His Fidesz party got 53 percent of the votes, as the Hungarian electoral office announced in the morning after counting 99 percent of the votes. This gives the party 135 of the 199 seats in parliament. As a result, Orban can govern for the fourth time in a row with a constitution-amending two-thirds majority.

In the first ballot on April 10, 2022, the French elected their head of state. None of the twelve candidates managed to win an absolute majority of the votes in the first ballot. A runoff election on April 24 therefore decided whether President Emmanuel Macron would remain in office or whether his right-wing populist challenger, Marine Le Pen, would move into the Élysée Palace. Macron was confirmed in office with around 58.5 percent of valid voters. Le Pen won around 41.5 percent of the vote. Around 28 percent of those entitled to vote decided against casting their votes. And 8.6 percent of the votes cast were invalid or blank.

The Swedish Riksdag election is scheduled for September 11, 2022. On the same day, the elections for the secondary municipal parliaments (Regionfullmäktige) and primary municipal parliaments (Kommunfullmäktige) are held.

Social Democrat Stefan Löfven was Prime Minister of Sweden from October 3, 2014 to November 30, 2021. On November 10, he submitted his resignation as head of government. The step came as no surprise: Löfven had already announced in August last year that he would step down first as party leader and then as head of government. He had previously handed over the party chairmanship to Magdalena Andersson, his party colleague and long-time finance minister.

After Löfven's resignation, Andersson was elected Prime Minister of Sweden on November 24, 2021. Seven hours later, however, the Greens left the coalition after the opposition's budget proposal (Moderate Coalition Party, Christian Democrats, Sweden Democrats) found a relative majority, prompting Andersson to resign. A few days later she was elected Prime Minister of Sweden for the second time.

In recent polls, the Social Democrats are only slightly ahead of the bourgeois-conservative Moderaterna party.

The midterm elections, also known as the midterms, are the elections to the US Congress, the legislature of the United States, which take place between two presidential elections. They are so exciting because they are often interpreted as a mood picture of the politics of the incumbent President Joe Biden - and thus provide an outlook on the presidential elections in 2024.

The US Congress consists of two "houses", the 435-seat House of Representatives and the 100-seat US Senate. In the United States Senate election, 34 of the 100 Senate seats are up for election. Of those 34 seats, 14 are currently held by Democrats and 20 by Republicans. Senators are elected by direct election for six-year terms by voters in the state they represent in the United States Senate. The Senators will belong to the 118th Congress.

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in the United States House of Representatives election. The deputies are elected by direct vote in their congressional district for 2 years, i.e. for the 118th United States Congress. This election is the first to use the 2020 United States Census distribution of seats by state. Therefore, all constituencies are redesigned.

The midterms always take place in the middle of the four-year term of office of the US President - and like the US presidential election - always on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November.