Three countries have held elections in the past few days and all of them have delivered results that will hopefully bring those countries closer to true democracies.

Serbia

In 2012, following a year of protests, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) was elected on an anti-corruption platform.

Guess what happened 25 October 2026!

Following TWO YEARS of protests, a new group called Student List defeated SNS and were elected on an anti-corruption and anti-organised-crime platform, among other things!

Perhaps this group will succeed. But Student List was only formed in September and still has a long way to go to become a firmly established party. It has no obvious leaders and its members are not used to politics.

As the BBC commented [1]:

It is not often a European country votes to fully reset its political system overnight, and Serbians have voted to hand the task to a group of novice politicians, made up of intellectuals, professors, artists, athletes and as many as 12 medical doctors and surgeons.

But the handover of power will take weeks, and the students’ movement is concerned that evidence of possible wrongdoing could be destroyed in that time.

Israel

The Israeli political party Likud which had governed Israel for four years, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, failed to win a majority in the elections held on 27 October 2026. In fact no party or bloc won outright. This Likud defeat was due in part because there was a record voting turnout by Arab citizens of Israel, who were motivated to vote in order to defeat Likud and get rid of Netanyahu.

This is not surprising when you consider the terrible war crimes of intentionally directing attacks against civilian Palestinians that Netanyahu has ordered and for which he is wanted for genocide by the International Criminal Court [2].

That’s the good news.

However the question of who will govern Israel in future is still unclear. On 4 November Israel’s President Isaac Herzog began consultations with political parties on whom to task with forming a new coalition government [3].

Reuters reported on 5 November that an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party had withheld support for any nominee and two ‌Arab-led parties had endorsed Netanyahu’s main opponent [4].

President Herzog was due to meet Netanyahu and his chief political rival Gadi Eisenkot to decide which of the two men to pick to form a government, after holding talks with smaller parties. He has until November 11 to decide.

USA

In the US midterm elections on 3 November 2026, the Republican party lost its majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, mainly as a result of the surge in inflation due to Donald Trump’s illegal and incompetent war against Iran begun in February 2025. As a result of that war, Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz and cut off around 25% of global seaborne oil trade thereby driving up oil prices around the world.

Now Trump is what the Guardian calls a “lame duck” [5]. And it describes how Democrats might treat in coming months as follows [6]:

With such a large cushion in both chambers, the Democrats will also be emboldened to use their newly acquired oversight and subpoena powers aggressively to investigate the most egregious of Trump’s excesses.

That includes the president’s financial enrichment of himself and his family, which Democratic leaders have said amounts to corruption.

References

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmx2dwzp0z0vo

[2] https://unacov.uk/arrest-warrants-issued-for-netanyahu-and-others-by-icc/

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6z98z5z91ppo

[4] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/netanyahus-position-weakens-ultra-orthodox-party-withholds-support-2026-11-05/

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/04/explainer-midterms-trump-us-global-economy-markets

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/04/democrats-house-midterm-elections-results