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      Republic of Georgia Election

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      The ruling Georgia Dream party won a majority in the vote. The opposition, which fears the country is moving away from the West, says the voting was not fair and that it will not appear in Parliament.Georgia, a strategically-located republic at the center of the Caucasus, plunged into political crisis on Sunday as the ruling party celebrated victory in a pivotal election that the pro-Western opposition declared as falsified, vowing to boycott the new parliament.The shaky situation further polarized a political struggle between Georgian Dream, which has governed Georgia for 12 years, increasingly steering it away from its decades-long path to join NATO and the European Union, and the four political groups that aimed to keep it moving toward the West.The crisis will likely push Georgia further away from the West, with European observers criticizing the conduct of the election on Sunday. Zlatko Vujovic, the head of the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, characterized the election as “not good.”“They were not conducted in the proper way as should be expected from a country that has a E.U. candidate status,” Mr. Vujovic said at a briefing with journalists.Critical violations included violence against opposition members, voter intimidation, smear campaigns targeting observers, and extensive misuse of administrative resources, he said.The Election Administration of Georgia, the body that oversees elections in the country, reported on Sunday that the ruling party garnered more than 54 percent of the vote with the four main opposition groups receiving 37.5 percent. That means that Georgian Dream will have 89 seats in Parliament with the remaining 61 occupied by the opposition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For First Time in Decades, Japan Votes in a Knife-Edge Election

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      The Japanese electorate seemed poised to punish the Liberal Democrats, even if it does not go so far as to hand power to the opposition.Japanese voters are not accustomed to nail-biter elections.But as the country holds parliamentary elections on Sunday, the party that has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955 is facing the possibility that it could lose its majority in the body’s lower chamber, the House of Representatives.Just one month after a leadership vote by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party anointed Shigeru Ishiba as the new prime minister, the party entered the election under considerable pressure from a public angered by a long-simmering political finance scandal, rising inflation and the burdens of raising families.That does not necessarily mean that Japanese voters are ready to hand the government to a divided and enfeebled political opposition, which last won a general election 15 years ago. Analysts said it was likely that the incumbent party would either eke out just enough seats to retain parliamentary power or would be forced to bring on new coalition partners to remain in charge.“What is most interesting about this election is its uncertainty,” said Masaru Kohno, a political scientist at Waseda University in Tokyo.Unlike in other countries, where the electorate is divided over ideology and vastly different policy platforms, Japanese voters are frustrated by a sense that all options are uninspiring and that the governing party has grown complacent.On the eve of the election, Mr. Ishiba stopped at a rally for a Liberal Democratic candidate near the Tokyo Dome, a baseball stadium in the northern part of the city. Acknowledging the instability in his party, he appealed to the undecided voters standing in the crowd of about 500 that had gathered on the edge of a playground.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Your Senate Election Guide as Democrats and Republicans Race for Control

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      The chamber had seemed like Republicans’ to lose, but a few surprises are playing out.All year, control of the Senate has seemed like Republicans’ to lose. They are practically certain to pick up Senator Joe Manchin’s West Virginia Senate seat, and they need just one more of seven competitive seats held by Democrats or an independent to claim the majority.With Senator Jon Tester, a farmer and a third-term Democrat, trailing his Republican opponent in Montana, a state that’s gotten redder and redder, Republicans are closing in on their goal of wresting back the Democrats’ narrow majority. That would turbocharge Donald Trump’s ability to install his allies in political and judicial roles if he were to win the presidency, and it would stymie Vice President Kamala Harris’s agenda right out of the gate if she won.But this has been a year of political surprises — and there are several playing out across the Senate map right now.Democrats led many of those competitive races for much of the year, but some have tightened in recent weeks. Republican-held seats in Texas and Nebraska (yes, Nebraska) have become surprisingly competitive. And some candidates are subtly shifting their messages.To explain the state of play, I called my colleagues Carl Hulse and Annie Karni, our indomitable congressional correspondents who are covering the two toughest Senate re-election battles on the map, Montana and Ohio. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Jess Bidgood: Annie and Carl, welcome back to the newsletter! Where are you?Carl Hulse: I am in Montana, where I’ve been for a week, chasing around Tim Sheehy, the Republican running to unseat Jon Tester, and watching a gazillion ads on TV. It’s incessant. I feel for these people. They’ve been bombarded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Michigan Could Be the Difference Maker for Harris in the 2024 Election

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      Operatives from both parties see the race as deadlocked, and both insist they have a clearer path.Last month, I laid out four swing states that — at that time — seemed most likely to help you understand the election: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. They are all still very important. But, in a twist that was probably inevitable in a close and volatile election, another state may be emerging as do-or-die territory for Vice President Kamala Harris.This is why I headed to Michigan this week.Michigan is, after Pennsylvania, the state where the campaigns for both Harris and former President Donald Trump, and their allies, have spent the most money on television advertising. It is the only state where both candidates, both of their running mates and both Obamas were all scheduled to appear this week, with both Harris and Trump themselves holding two public events each.And, if Trump’s slight polling leads in Georgia and North Carolina bear out on Election Day, the loss of Michigan’s 15 electoral votes could cost Harris the presidency even if she holds onto Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.On paper, you might think Michigan would be easy for Democrats. The state helped Democrats win back the House in 2018, gave President Biden his biggest margin of victory among the swing states in 2020, and handed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, an 11 percentage-point victory after the Dobbs decision in 2022.Both Democratic and Republican operatives I spoke with here believe the race to be deadlocked, and both sides insisted they have a clearer path to victory. Allies of Trump believe that Harris’s troubles with Arab American voters, who are frustrated with the Biden administration’s policy toward Israel, and her apparent erosion among some Black men, will carry him over the finish line. Democrats are trying to hold the line in Detroit and run up the score in the suburbs, leaning hard on women as they pull out their post-2016 playbook for its biggest test yet.“We are not in panic mode,” Representative Hillary Scholten, a Democrat whose district in Western Michigan includes the kind of well-educated suburbs, such as East Grand Rapids, that Harris is banking on. “Michigan could come down to something like two votes per precinct. We want to make sure we’re reaching all of those voters.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chapo Wins Mozambique’s Presidency in Disputed Election

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      Daniel Chapo of the Frelimo party, which has governed the southern African nation for nearly 50 years, was declared the victor amid violence and widespread allegations of fraud.Daniel Chapo was declared the winner of Mozambique’s presidential election on Thursday after a process marred by violence and widespread accusations that his party, Frelimo, which has run the country for nearly five decades, committed fraud.The country’s electoral commission announced that Mr. Chapo won with nearly 71 percent of the vote in the election, which was held on Oct. 9. He will replace Filipe Nyusi, who has served his limit of two five-year terms.The announcement came amid deep upheaval in a southern African nation that has been battling a yearslong insurgency by Islamist extremists in its northern coastal region of Cabo Delgado. The conflict has only deepened the divisions between those who benefit from Mozambique’s trove of natural resources — including natural gas and precious stones — and those struggling with widespread poverty and unemployment.On Monday, tear gas and gunfire filled the streets of the capital, Maputo, as the police clashed with thousands of demonstrators, who accused the governing party of rigging the election and orchestrating the fatal shooting of two supporters of Mr. Chapo’s main rival.Frelimo has said it has not committed any fraud and was not involved in the killings.“Frelimo is confident that the results reflect the will of the people,” Ludmila Maguni, a party spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The New York Times.This month’s election and the sporadic protests around it may be one of the sharpest tests of Frelimo’s power since it led Mozambique to independence from Portugal in 1975 and weathered a civil war in the years after.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math

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      A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.“Math is power” is the tag line of a new documentary, “Counted Out,” currently making the rounds at festivals and community screenings. (It will have a limited theatrical release next year.) The film explores the intersection of mathematics, civil rights and democracy. And it delves into how an understanding of math, or lack thereof, affects society’s ability to deal with its most pressing challenges and crises — health care, climate, misinformation, elections.“When we limit access to the power of math to a select few, we limit our progress as a society,” said Vicki Abeles, the film’s director and a former Wall Street lawyer.Ms. Abeles was spurred to make the film in part in response to an anxiety about math that she had long observed in students, including her middle-school-age daughter. She was also struck by the math anxiety among friends and colleagues, and by the extent to which they tried to avoid math altogether. She wondered: Why are people so afraid of math? What are the consequences?One of many mathematicians who share their perspectives in the film is Ismar Volic, a professor at Wellesley College and a founder, in 2019, of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. He is also the author of “Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps and Representation.”Dr. Volic grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country that in the early 1990s went through “a horrific war,” he said. “I am familiar with what collapse of democracy can lead to.” He saw parallels between what happened in Bosnia and what was happening in the United States and around the world. “That has driven me in the last few years, understanding the mechanics of democracy, the infrastructure of democracy, which is very much mathematical,” he said.The following conversation, conducted by videoconference and email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How ‘Gilded Age’ Star Christine Baranski Is Helping Harris Sway Polish American Voters

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      Voters with Eastern European backgrounds could be crucial in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.Christine Baranski, star of stage and screen, was watching the presidential debate in September when a lightbulb went off.Vice President Kamala Harris made a pointed reference to “the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania” as she castigated former President Donald Trump for his warm relationship with Vladimir Putin. Baranski, an actress who is among the country’s more famous Polish Americans, wondered if she could help sway any of them to Harris.This is how Baranski, a Buffalo native who plays a socialite in “The Gilded Age,” found herself on a modest street corner in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., last week, knocking on doors and talking to me.“I just thought, ‘Well, if there’s a way of making Polish Americans feel that heroic thing that they have,’” Baranski said, after stepping off a doorstep decorated for Halloween. “This election is so important that actually they could make a difference.”As Election Day nears, Polish American voters — as well as other Eastern European ethnic groups — have become as hot a commodity, electorally speaking, as kielbasa at Christmastime.In a dead-heat race, both Trump and Harris have made direct appeals to the group, which happens to be well-represented in the so-called Blue Wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. While Polish Americans are often seen as fairly conservative because of their Catholic roots, Democrats are hoping to gain the support of those who are concerned about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and apprehensive about Trump’s ties to the Russian president. Harris’s campaign is working to reach to those voters on the ground, while her allies say they have spent more than $1 million on digital advertisements micro-targeted at Polish and Ukrainian Americans in Pennsylvania.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Joko Widodo Achieved as President

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      Joko Widodo rose from a slum to the presidency. As his term ends, he is being accused of undermining the democracy that made that possible.The words “emergency warning” galvanized protesters in Indonesia in August. It was a rallying cry to protect the world’s third-largest democracy, which broke free from dictatorship less than 30 years ago. Thousands of protesters took to the streets. Some stormed the gates of Parliament, tearing one down in fury.The threat, as they saw it, was from their elected leader, President Joko Widodo.In his two terms in office, Mr. Joko, who steps down on Sunday, has transformed Indonesia, virtually eradicating extreme poverty in the sprawling archipelago, where about 280 million people live. But many believe he has also tried to bend the laws to install a political dynasty, undercutting the very democracy that let him become the country’s first president who was not from the military or the long-established political elite.Last year, critics say, Mr. Joko — widely known to Indonesians as Jokowi — engineered a Constitutional Court ruling that let his 36-year-old son run for vice president. The son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, was elected in February alongside Mr. Joko’s choice to succeed him as president, Prabowo Subianto, a former defense minister and general who has been linked to human rights abuses. In August, Mr. Joko’s allies attempted another maneuver to get his 29-year-old son, Kaesang Pangarep, on a ballot for political office. Infuriated Indonesians saw it as another about-face from Mr. Joko, who once declared, “Becoming a president does not mean channeling power to my children.”Thousands of protesters took to the streets in August, enraged by a plan to revise a law that would allow the younger son of Mr. Joko to run in local elections next month.Timur Matahari/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThousands of protesters gathered outside the Parliament and Constitutional Court in Jakarta, the capital. Mr. Joko was subjected to very personal attacks, as social media users cursed him by using his birth name, Mulyono. (Mr. Joko was a sickly child whose parents renamed him in hopes of better health; calling him Mulyono was tantamount to casting a hex.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More