Something has been shifting across Europe
At the turn of the millennium, the arc of European politics appeared to bend unmistakably toward stability, integration, and liberal democratic consolidation. The Cold War was over. The European Union was expanding eastward, extending a rules-based political order across countries that had spent much of the twentieth century divided by the Iron Curtain.[i] Mainstream parties appeared firmly entrenched. In much of the continent, the far right remained electorally marginal or politically isolated.[ii] For many observers, liberal democracy in Europe had not simply survived the tumultuous twentieth century; it had prevailed.
That confidence now looks fragile.
Over the past two decades, Europe’s political landscape has undergone changes that might have been difficult to imagine at the optimistic turn of the century. Parties that governed for generations have weakened or collapsed. Political movements founded months before elections have swept into power with historic majorities, disrupting long-standing party systems.[iii] Far-right groups once confined to the political fringes have entered governing coalitions, won executive power, or become major parliamentary forces.[iv] In Hungary and, through a different institutional path, Poland, governing parties used their electoral mandates to systematically reshape key institutions designed to check their power, weakening constraints on their own authority.[v]
This report examines those shifts. Drawing on the results of every national parliamentary election held between 2008 and 2026 in fifteen European countries (thirteen European Union member states, along with the United Kingdom and Norway), it asks a deceptively simple question: in which direction has Europe moved, how fast, and what does that movement reveal about the pressures on democracy across the continent?
The answer, in short, is to the right; but unevenly, with important exceptions, and often sharpened by the institutional machinery that translates votes into seats. In several countries, parliamentary composition has moved farther than the underlying electoral pattern, materially altering the pace and apparent direction of political and ideological change.
The dataset behind this analysis covers 83 national elections and tracks 841 individual party performances. Each party is assigned an ideology score on a scale from −3 (far left) to +3 (far right). These scores are weighted by each party’s vote share and seat share to produce two normalized indices for every election: one representing the ideological balance selected by voters and the other representing the ideological balance ultimately reflected in parliament.[vi] This analysis also incorporates economic and social indicators, including GDP growth, unemployment rates, and net migration, which will be examined in later sections.
Any single numerical measure necessarily simplifies a political landscape shaped by history, institutions, coalitions, and crises. The purpose of this analysis is not to reduce European politics to one ideological axis, nor to treat movement along that axis as synonymous with democratic decline. It is to make visible a set of patterns that are easy to describe impressionistically but harder to evaluate systematically: where change has occurred, how quickly it has unfolded, when parliamentary outcomes have diverged from electoral patterns, and what these differences may help us understand. These patterns raise urgent questions that Europeans themselves, like many of us across the globe, are actively grappling with.
What this report documents is consequential: not as an indictment of European democracy, but as an accounting of the forces testing its resilience. The resurgence of right-wing populism, democratic backsliding, and the erosion of institutional checks on power are not confined to weak or newly established democracies.[vii] These dynamics do not discriminate based on the strength or age of a country’s democratic institutions, the depth of its democratic traditions, or the sincerity of its stated and demonstrated commitments to democratic governance. If these patterns are visible here (and not just visible, but measurable, documented, and in several countries intensifying), the lesson is not that European democracy has failed. It is that no democracy is immune.
What follows begins at the continental level, with the full picture, before narrowing to the regional and national stories behind it.
Continental Overview
Beginning with what the data shows most plainly, the picture is striking but not uniform. Europe has not moved in lockstep. Across the fifteen democracies examined in this report, the strongest sustained shifts in parliamentary ideology since 2008 have been rightward.
The interactive map below encodes this pattern geographically. Each country is colored according to the annual slope of its normalized seat-share-weighted ideology index: the rate at which the ideological composition of its parliament has changed over the period of interest.[viii] Deeper shades of red indicate faster rightward movement, while deeper shades of blue indicate faster leftward movement. Shades closer to white indicate relative stability.
The strongest rightward trajectories appear across four countries spanning Southern, Northern, and Western Europe: Italy (+0.066 per year), the Netherlands (+0.050), Germany (+0.041), and France (+0.032). Each exceeds the threshold used in this analysis to classify a country as ‘moving right.’[ix] These are not peripheral cases or countries with only recently consolidated democratic institutions. Rather, they include some of Europe’s longest-established postwar democracies. That these four countries sit at the top of the ‘rightward movement’ trend is significant, further emphasizing the notion that pronounced ideological movement is not limited to systems with fragile institutional histories.
A second group of countries also moved to the right over the period studied but at a slower pace: Austria (+0.015), Greece (+0.013), Poland (+0.010), and Spain (+0.002). While their slopes fall within the ‘relatively stable’ band, this classification should not be mistaken for stasis. It means only that the overall rate of change remains below the threshold used in this analysis to identify a sustained directional shift. The same caution applies to countries with modestly negative slopes. Denmark (−0.007), Belgium (−0.012), Bulgaria (−0.012), and Norway (−0.017) also fall within the ‘relatively stable’ band. Bulgaria is the clearest reminder here that a modest net slope does not necessarily indicate political calm: it held twelve parliamentary elections between 2009 and 2026 (the most elections in this entire dataset), including eight since just April 2021. The resulting trendline is relatively flat; not because Bulgaria’s parliamentary composition remained stable, but because repeated swings to both the left and right partly cancel one another out over time.
At the other end of the spectrum, three countries meet the threshold for a sustained leftward parliamentary trajectory: Hungary (−0.041), Ireland (−0.036), and the United Kingdom (−0.029). These cases, however, should not be read as evidence of a single shared realignment; each of their trendlines reflects distinct political stories. The UK’s leftward seat-share slope is driven heavily by its 2024 general election, when the Labour Party won 411 of the 650 House of Commons seats (approximately 63.2% of the total seat share) with just roughly 33.7% of the national vote. Ireland’s trajectory reflects the restructuring of a historically distinctive party system.[x] And Hungary’s slope reflects the dramatic reversal following its recent 2026 election, when the center-right TISZA party defeated Fidesz, ending sixteen years of rule under Viktor Orbán.[xi]
These cases also demonstrate why ideological position and direction of movement must be distinguished carefully. Hungary’s latest parliament remains right of center, with a seat-share-weighted index of 0.61, despite its trend classification of ‘moving left.’ Poland presents an inverse dynamic: its latest parliament has the highest seat-weighted ideology score in the dataset (1.35), yet its annual slope remains within the relatively stable band because it began the period from an already right-leaning position.
Table 1 grounds these findings in the underlying data. For each of the fifteen countries covered, it displays a brief description of the electoral system and headline seat threshold used, the number and date range of elections included, the most recent parliament’s normalized ideology index, the annual seat-share-weighted slope, the resulting directional classification, and the far-right-coded vote share at the latest election.
These columns measure and exhibit different dimensions of political change: present ideological position, general direction of movement, electoral volatility, institutional design, and the growth of parties classified at the far-right endpoint of the ideological scale (3). Together, these features establish the central pattern of this section: the sharpest sustained parliamentary shifts in this dataset have largely moved to the right.
Votes, Seats, and Representational Amplification
Not all votes are equal
Across the countries in this dataset, the relationship between what voters select at the ballot box and what their parliaments ultimately reflect varies enormously. That variation is not incidental; it is shaped by the institutional rules through which votes are translated into representation.
Table 1 identifies three broad electoral system categories: Proportional, Majoritarian, and Mixed. These categories describe the basic mechanism by which votes are converted into parliamentary seats, and they have profound consequences for whose preferences get represented and whose slip through the cracks. However, these labels are simplified, and systems within the same category can still produce markedly different outcomes. Some make it easier for smaller parties to enter parliament. Some add seats to bring the final distribution closer to the national vote. Others reward the party that finishes first or allow support to consolidate between rounds. To this end, the table’s seat-threshold column offers a useful point of reference but not a complete account of how any country’s electoral system works.
In proportional systems, seats are allocated in approximate proportion to votes received. In principle, a party that wins 20% of the vote wins roughly 20% of the seats. The degree of proportionality varies meaningfully, however, in how closely they approach that ideal. The Netherlands sits near one end of the spectrum. A party needs approximately 0.67% of the national vote (the equivalent of one seat in the 150-member Tweede Kamer, the Dutch lower chamber) to gain representation. Denmark uses a 2% threshold alongside alternative qualification routes. Norway adds a further corrective mechanism: of the 169 members elected to the Storting, 150 occupy constituency seats, while 19 occupy leveling seats: one for each electoral district. These leveling seats are distributed after the constituency allocation, in order to bring the final parliamentary result closer to the national vote distribution.[xii]
Not all proportional systems operate with this corrective logic, however. Greece has repeatedly used variants of “reinforced” proportional representation that award bonus seats to the party finishing first.[xiii] In Greece’s June 2023 repeat election, the current graduated version of this bonus system delivered the maximum 50-seat bonus to the center-right New Democracy party: with just 40.6% of the vote, it won 158 of 300 parliamentary seats (approximately 52.7% of the Voulí).
Majoritarian systems operate differently. In the UK, members of Parliament are elected from single-member constituencies under first-past-the-post (FPTP) rules: the candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins the seat, regardless of whether that candidate receives an absolute majority.[xiv] National seat totals can therefore diverge sharply from national vote shares; the 2024 Labour result is a particularly illustrative example. France also elects legislators from single-member constituencies, but through a two-round system.[xv] The final composition of parliament can therefore be shaped not only by first-round support, but also by eliminations or withdrawals, alliances, tactical voting, and second-round consolidation.[xvi] The vote-share measure used in this report reflects first-round results, while the seat share measure reflects the parliament ultimately produced after the second round. In France, the gap between votes and seats, therefore, captures not only the electoral formula itself, but also withdrawals, alliances, tactical voting, and second-round consolidation.
Mixed systems combine elements of both proportional and majoritarian, constituency-based systems. Germany uses personalized proportional representation: voters cast one ballot for a constituency candidate and a second for a party list, with the second vote playing the more decisive role in determining each party’s share of parliamentary seats. Germany’s 5% threshold nevertheless remains consequential. In its 2025 election, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance received 4.981% of second votes and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) received 4.3%; both were tantalizingly close to clearing the threshold, yet neither entered the Bundestag. By contrast, the South Schleswig Voters’ Association retained representation through an exemption for parties representing ethnic minorities.[xvii] Italy and Hungary also rely on mixed systems, although their rules differ substantially from Germany’s, as well as from one another’s.
Figures 1 and 2 trace the election-by-election ideological composition produced within these systems. In each row, a new tile begins at an election and carries that election’s index forward until the country’s next election. The printed value marks the score produced by the election, while the arrow indicates the direction of change from the previous election. Figure 1 weights ideology scores by seat share and therefore reflects the composition of the parliament ultimately formed. Figure 2 weights the same scores by vote share, providing the corresponding electoral comparison.
Examined together, the heatmaps show both how parliamentary ideology has evolved from one election to the next and where the translation of votes into seats has amplified, muted, or even reversed the ideological pattern expressed at the ballot box.
In several elections, the parliament produced is more rightward than the underlying electoral pattern. Greece provides the clearest example. In the June 2023 repeat election, its vote-share-weighted index remained slightly left of the midpoint, at −0.11, while its seat-share-weighted parliamentary index moved to 0.11. Italy’s 2022 election exhibits a larger difference in degree: a vote-share-weighted index of 0.85 translated to a seat-share-weighted-index of 1.14.
Other elections reveal an opposite effect. France’s 2024 first-round vote-share pattern registered an ideology score of 0.49, while the parliament ultimately formed after the second round registered 0.22. In the UK, the contrast is sharper still: the 2024 vote-share-weighted index remained modestly right of the midpoint (at 0.20), while its seat-share-weighted parliamentary index fell to −0.44.
The heatmaps also show that ideological change does not unfold in the same way everywhere. Focusing on Figure 1, in the Netherlands, the movement is cumulative: the parliamentary index rises from 0.33 in 2010, to 0.57 in 2021, and 1.02 in 2023, before easing slightly to 0.95 in 2025. Italy’s movement is more abrupt, accelerating sharply after 2013. Hungary remained firmly right of center throughout the period of Fidesz dominance, before falling from 1.45 in 2022 to 0.61 after the 2026 election. Bulgaria’s repeated elections produce a different pattern again: frequent fluctuations that culminate in a steep shift from 0.78 in 2024 to −0.23 in 2026.
These examples should not be read as evidence of a single institutional bias. Electoral systems do not invariably push parliaments farther right or farther left. They mediate political change: sometimes intensifying it, sometimes dampening it, and sometimes altering its apparent direction.
Table 2 measures how these election-level differences accumulate over time. The seat–vote amplification gap is calculated by subtracting each country’s vote-share-weighted ideology slope from its seat-share-weighted slope. A positive value means that parliamentary composition moved farther right over the period studied than the underlying vote-share pattern. A negative value means that it moved farther left. This metric does not isolate an independent causal effect of electoral rules; it captures the combined representational effects of those rules and the political dynamics of the elections held under them.
Italy records the largest positive amplification gap in the dataset, at +0.022 per year. Its electorate moved substantially right over the period studied, but its parliament moved right even faster. Germany follows at +0.013, with Greece close behind at +0.010. France (+0.007) and Austria (+0.006) also show parliamentary movement that outpaced the corresponding vote-share trajectory.
The Netherlands offers an interesting counterexample. While its parliamentary ideology shifted strongly right, its seat–vote gap is only +0.001 per year. In other words, its parliament moved right largely because its electorate did. Denmark shows even closer alignment: its gap rounds to zero.
At the other end of the table, Hungary (−0.033) and the United Kingdom (−0.026) record the largest negative gaps. In both countries, the seat-share trajectory crosses into the ‘moving left’ classification, even though the vote-share trajectory remains within the ‘relatively stable’ band. Ireland also records a notable negative gap, although its vote- and seat-share trends both move left.
Figure 3 makes the distinction between ideological movement and representational amplification especially clear. Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, and France display the strongest sustained rightward parliamentary movement. Yet the distances between each country’s bars differ substantially. As in Table 2, Italy and Germany show visible amplification: their parliaments moved farther right than their electorates alone would suggest. In the Netherlands, by contrast, the bars nearly overlap.
The same distinction appears among countries moving left. Hungary and the United Kingdom show relatively modest vote-share movement but pronounced leftward seat-share slopes.
The conclusion is narrower than a claim that one electoral model is inherently more democratic than another, but it is no less consequential. Electoral systems do not simply transmit voter preferences. They filter them. In some cases, they preserve the ideological balance expressed at the ballot box with considerable fidelity; in others, they magnify, mute, or redirect it. Any account of Europe’s political trajectory must therefore examine not only how voters have changed, but also how political institutions convert those choices into power.
The Far Right Surge
The broader rightward movement documented above cannot be reduced to the rise of the far right. In several countries, however, the electoral growth of far-right parties is one of its clearest components.
Figure 4 tracks the combined vote share of parties assigned a score of 3 on the ideology scale, at each election. This is a deliberately narrow measure: it captures parties classified at the far-right endpoint of the scale, not every party on the political right or every party commonly described as right-wing populist or radical right. It therefore isolates one important dimension of the broader ideological shift, documented in the preceding sections.
This distinction matters. The political influence of the far right cannot be measured solely by the vote share of parties formally classified at the far-right endpoint. Parties historically situated within the mainstream right may adopt positions, rhetoric, or governing practices associated with the radical right; parties may also evolve over time in ways that complicate any fixed ideological label.
Even under this deliberately restrictive definition, the pattern is striking. Because Figure 4 counts only parties assigned the most severe 3 classification, it almost certainly understates the broader reach of radical-right politics: it does not capture the diffusion of far-right positions into mainstream parties or the ideological evolution of parties that remain classified elsewhere on the right-leaning side of the scale. Thus, the substantial growth visible, even under this narrower and more conservatively-assigned measure, is especially significant. In several of Europe’s largest democracies, far-right-coded parties have gained substantial ground, with some of the sharpest increases appearing in the most recent elections.
In France, the combined far-right-coded vote share rose from approximately 14% in 2012 to 33.4% in 2024. Germany’s increase is similarly pronounced: from under 2% in 2009 to 20.8% in 2025, with support nearly doubling between the two latest elections. Italy’s shift is later and more abrupt. Parties coded at an ideology score of 3 received less than 3% of the vote in 2008 and 2013, but rose precipitously to 29.1% in 2022 (an increase of approximately 26.7 percentage points, or roughly twelvefold). Austria began the period at an already elevated level and reached 28.8% in 2024.
The Netherlands shows a broadly upward, though not uninterrupted, movement. Far-right-coded support fell from approximately 15.5% in 2010 to around 10% in 2012, then climbed across the following elections to a peak above 25% in 2023 before easing to 21.2% in 2025. Belgium follows a shallower U-shaped pattern: support declined between 2010 and 2014, then rose steadily to 13.8% in 2024. In the United Kingdom, the reversal is sharper. Far-right-coded support rose to approximately 12.5% in 2015, collapsed to around 2% in the next two elections, and then rebounded to 14.5% in 2024: its highest level in the period.
The surge is neither universal nor uniform. Denmark, Ireland, Norway, and Poland record little or no support for parties coded at an ideology score of 3. Spain exhibits a later emergence: far-right-coded parties received virtually no support through 2016, yet support rose sharply to approximately 15% in 2019 and remained above 12% in 2023. Greece and Hungary follow more uneven trajectories. Bulgaria seems especially volatile: far-right-coded support declined from around 9% in 2009 to nearly zero by 2021, before climbing rapidly across a succession of elections to roughly 14%, before falling sharply to 4.2% in 2026.
Flat, or declining, lines displayed in Figure 4 should be interpreted carefully. They do not necessarily mean that radical-right ideas, rhetoric, or governing practices have remained marginal. Poland illustrates the limitation especially clearly. It has the most right-leaning latest parliament in the dataset, with a seat-share-weighted ideology index of 1.35, while recording no vote share for parties assigned the most extreme 3 classification. Figure 4 is, therefore, best understood as a measure of explicitly far-right electoral strength, not as a complete measure of the reach of far-right politics.
To be sure, the political influence of the radical and extreme right can extend beyond the parties that sit at the far-right edge of the political spectrum. Established parties may respond to electoral competition by adopting positions typically associated with the radical right; far-right parties may, likewise, become increasingly integrated into mainstream political systems without substantially moderating their platforms.[xviii] The broader question is therefore not only how many voters support explicitly far-right parties, but also how far the positions, rhetoric, and governing practices associated with those parties travel beyond them.
Ultimately, Figure 4 does not reveal a single far-right wave advancing uniformly across the continent. It illustrates something more uneven, but no less consequential: a concentrated surge in explicitly far-right electoral support across several of Europe’s major democracies, notable even under the intentionally cautious coding rule used in this analysis, alongside a broader political environment in which the boundaries between the mainstream and radical right have become increasingly blurred and difficult to treat as fixed.
Democratic Participation
Ideological change is only one dimension of democratic resilience. Participation matters too.
Figure 5 tracks voter turnout at each national parliamentary election included in the dataset. Unlike the ideological measures examined above, turnout does not reveal a single dominant continental trajectory. Instead, it shows substantial and persistent differences across countries.
Belgium remains close to 90% throughout the period, although its turnout should be interpreted in the context of compulsory voting. Denmark also remains remarkably stable, with turnout consistently above 84%. Norway ends the period near 80%, while Germany rises notably to approximately 82.5% in 2025.
Other countries display marked increases in participation after earlier periods of lower turnout. Poland rises from under 50% in 2011 to around 74% in 2023; similarly, Hungary climbs from roughly 60% in 2010 to nearly 80% in 2026. In both cases, the increase is substantial enough to suggest a more mobilized electorate, although this chart alone cannot establish what drove this mobilization.
The sharpest declines appear in Greece and Bulgaria. Greece’s turnout fell from more than 80% in 2009 to approximately 54% in its June 2023 repeat election. Bulgaria’s turnout dropped below 35% in October 2024 after a succession of inconclusive elections, before recovering to about 50% in 2026.[xix]
High turnout may reflect trust and engagement, but it may also signal polarization or a sense that an election is unusually consequential. Lower participation may reflect apathy, alienation, institutional barriers, weak political competition, or exhaustion after repeated elections.[xx] Turnout is an important indicator of democratic participation, but it is not a simple proxy for democratic health.
The democratic participation trends pictured in Figure 5 do, however, reinforce an important point. Elections are shaped not only by how citizens vote, but also by how many citizens continue to participate. Across the countries in this report, the level of engagement varies, reinforcing the indication that the pressures facing European democracies are shared, but not experienced uniformly.
[i] General Secretariat of the Council, “2004 Enlargement: Facts and Figures,” Council of the European Union, last reviewed January 30, 2025, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/2004-enlargement-facts-and-figures/; Publications Office of the European Union, “Accession Criteria (Copenhagen Criteria),” EUR-Lex, last reviewed September 8, 2025, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/accession-criteria-copenhagen-criteria.html; Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier, “Governance by Conditionality: EU Rule Transfer to the Candidate Countries of Central and Eastern Europe,” Journal of European Public Policy 11, no. 4 (2004): 661–79, https://doi.org/10.1080/1350176042000248089.
[ii] Cas Mudde, “Three Decades of Populist Radical Right Parties in Western Europe: So What?,” European Journal of Political Research 52, no. 1 (January 2013): 1–19, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02065.x.
[iii] Jae‐Jae Spoon and Heike Klüver, “Party Convergence and Vote Switching: Explaining Mainstream Party Decline across Europe,” European Journal of Political Research 58, no. 4 (November 2019): 1021–42, https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12331; Catherine E. De Vries and Sara B. Hobolt, “Challenger Parties and Populism,” LSE Public Policy Review 1, no. 1 (July 20, 2020), https://doi.org/10.31389/lseppr.3.
[iv] Max Becker, Johanna Flach, and Nicolai von Ondarza, “The Creeping Integration of Far-Right Parties in Europe,” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) Comment, no. 39 (September 19, 2025), https://doi.org/10.18449/2025C39.
[v] Laurent Pech and Kim Lane Scheppele, “Illiberalism within: Rule of Law Backsliding in the EU,” Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies 19 (December 1, 2017): 3–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/cel.2017.9.
[vi] A full description of the ideology scoring methodology, including party classifications and data sources, is provided in the appendix.
[vii] Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 1 (January 2016): 5–19, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2016.0012; Marina Nord et al., rep., Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling the Democratic Era?, 10th ed. (University of Gothenburg, V-Dem Institute, 2026).
[viii] Ideology scores are assigned on a scale from −3 (far left) to 3 (far right). For each election, the parliamentary ideology index is calculated as a normalized seat-share-weighted average: each included party’s ideology score is multiplied by its share of parliamentary seats, the resulting values are summed, and that sum is divided by the total seat share represented by parties with assigned ideology scores. The primary measure used throughout this report is weighted by seat share because seats reflect the distribution of parliamentary power: which parties can form governments, negotiate coalitions, pass legislation, and exercise oversight. The annual slope is estimated from the change in this normalized index across a given country’s elections over time. Normalization prevents any omitted or unclassified share from being implicitly treated as ideologically neutral.
[ix] Countries are classified according to the annual slope of their normalized seat-share-weighted ideology index: “Moving right” for slopes above +0.02 per year, “Relatively stable” for slopes between −0.02 and +0.02 per year, and “Moving left” for slopes below −0.02 per year. These classifications describe the direction and pace of movement over time, not a parliament’s absolute ideological position.
[x] Michael Gallagher, “The Results Analysed: The Definitive End of the Traditional Party System?,” essay, in How Ireland Voted 2020: The End of an Era, vol. 9 (Dublin, Ireland: Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2021), 165–96.
[xi] Gergely Szakacs, “Orban Ousted after 16 Years as Hungarians Flock to Pro-EU Rival,” Reuters, April 12, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/orban-ousted-after-16-years-hungarians-flock-pro-eu-rival-2026-04-12/.
[xii] Valgdirektoratet, “Parliamentary Elections,” Valg, September 12, 2025, https://www.valg.no/en/elections2/elections-in-norway/elections-to-the-storting–parliamentary-elections/.
[xiii] Dylan Difford, “Greece Changes Electoral Law, Then Changes It Back,” Electoral Reform Society, April 21, 2023, https://electoral-reform.org.uk/greece-changes-electoral-law-then-changes-it-back/; Kathimerini Newsroom, “Second Greek Election Will Be Held under Different Electoral System,” eKathimerini, May 27, 2023, https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1212044/explainer-the-second-greek-election-will-be-held-under-a-new-electoral-system/.
[xiv] Neil Johnston, “Voting Systems in the UK,” House of Commons Library, July 11, 2025, https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04458/.
[xv] A candidate may win in the first round by receiving an absolute majority of votes cast and support from at least one-quarter of registered voters; if no candidate clears these criteria, qualifying candidates proceed to a second round, where a plurality is sufficient. Assemblée nationale, “Fiche N°3 L’élection Des Députés,” Assemblée nationale, 2019, https://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/synthese/deputes-groupes-parlementaires/l-election-des-deputes.
[xvi] For France, the vote-share index uses first-round results, while the seat-share index reflects the final distribution of seats after the second round. This treats the first round as the clearest measure of parties’ initial national support and the final seat distribution as the parliament actually formed.
[xvii] The Federal Returning Officer, “Bundestag Election 2025: The Electoral System,” Die Bundeswahlleiterin, 2026, https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2025/informationen-waehler/wahlsystem.html.
[xviii] Tarik Abou-Chadi and Werner Krause, “The Causal Effect of Radical Right Success on Mainstream Parties’ Policy Positions: A Regression Discontinuity Approach,” British Journal of Political Science 50, no. 3 (June 14, 2018): 829–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007123418000029; Max Becker, Johanna Flach, and Nicolai von Ondarza, “The Creeping Integration of Far-Right Parties in Europe,” Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) Comment, no. 39 (September 19, 2025), https://doi.org/10.18449/2025C39.
[xix] Bulgaria’s October 2024 parliamentary election was its seventh in four years. The April 2026 election was its eighth in five years.
[xx] Edward Mcallister, “Bulgaria Holds Seventh Election in Four Years as Coalitions Fail Again,” Reuters, October 24, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bulgaria-holds-seventh-election-four-years-coalitions-fail-again-2024-10-24/; Edward Mcallister and Alex Lefkowitz, “Bulgarian Election Fraud in Spotlight on Eve of Vote,” Reuters, April 16, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/bulgarian-election-fraud-spotlight-eve-vote-2026-04-16/.
