Which leaders will not survive 2017?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

In this list, I tried to collect a mixture of incumbents seeking re-election (Merkel, Rouhani, English, Kenyatta, Solberg...), people in hairy situations (Temer, Maduro, Zuma, Poroshenko) and people who literally may not survive the year (Abbas, Mugabe). I omitted people that are stepping down or term-limited anyway (Hollande, Bachelet, Park (lol), Correa) and people I really don't think have a significant chance of being ousted (yet) - Trump, Trudeau, Santos, Morales, Macri, Castro, Putin, Xi, Modi, Hasina, Sirisena, Jokowi, Syzdlo, Kenny, Tsipras, Costa, Lofven, Michel, Buhari, Kabila, Magfuli, Suu Kyi, Musenevi, Essebsi, Bekirane- feel free to bump this laughing at me if any of these lot are ousted.

Personally I feel that
- Gentiloni's government won't survive and we will see early elections in Italy, possibly rewon by PD with Renzi at the helm.
- in a rational world Rajoy would be ousted for corruption, but as one should never apply the notion of a rational world to South European politics that hasn't happenedyet. Still, I feel Catalonia may present a crisis that Rajoy is unable to weather.
- Solberg will just survive reelection
- Sobotka will fall to ANO
- with Trump's election, I feel Poroskenko's faction will be weakened fatally, but the man will survive, unless there is literally a coup
- Duterte will be ousted, or at least there will be serious efforts to remove him
- I believe Razak may be narrowly defeated
- Turnbull will probably be challenged this year, and I'm going to make a wld prediction and say he will be defeated.
- Another wild prediction: English will be unable to capture Key's magic and be defeated by a weirdo coalition
- Baghdadi will just vanish and never be seen again
- Gambia will see an armed conflict put down by AU regional powers, Jammeh will escape into exile
- Zuma will be shut out
- Mugabe will die
- Temer will be impeached and Brazil will further slip into crisis.

[pikachu]

That'd be a pretty insane December.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

That'd be a pretty insane December.

oops, changed that

[Lord Halifax]

Jammeh (but no armed conflict, the Gambian army will not resist ECOWAS forces)
Solberg (no way she can get reelected - and Labour is flirting with the Christian Democrats anyway)
Gentiloni (because its Italy)
al-Baghdadi (the end of ISIS as a "state" is near)

Mugabe is immortal (and if he isn't Grace would stuff him and pretend he is)

I see no other likely changes.

[ag]

Peña Nieto (his main last name, the one his kids will get is Peña, no Nieto - learn Spanish) is not very likely to go in 2017: in part, because he is certainly going in 2018. Yes, he is corrupt, stupid and extremely unpopular, but he has reasonable congressional support and getting rid of him would be super costly constitutionally. Short of being caught in bed with a dead boy, while having his balls licked by a corrupt contract-seeker personally employed by Trump, there is very little that can happen to have him removed. Or, I guess, there could be a violent revolution - but there is not much indicating it is imminent.

[ag]

I would watch May. If somehow she loses on a Brexit vote (or on another confidence vote) and things are pushed into an election, I would, actually, watch Maidenhead. I mean, she, probably, wins. But it could get interesting.

[Axel Foley]

LOL, Gentiloni...he is not meant to arrive at the natural term end in 2018...

[dead0man]

Hopefully most of them.  I voted for Merkel and the douche in Caracas.

[Mike67]

Merkel,Abbas and Poroshenko

[Tender Branson]

The SPÖVP coalition climate in Austria is so toxic right now that I assume that either SPÖ or ÖVP are just waiting for the right time (probably fall 2017) to blow up the coalition and set new, early elections. I guess it will be the ÖVP who will risk it, installing Sebastian Kurz as leader in the summer after a period of government standstill and setting elections for September.

This will create a 3-way tie for first place, with the SPÖ/ÖVP/FPÖ all around 25-30% (Kurz will win back many FPÖ-voters).

The question will be if Kern can manage to win this election and stay on ...

[Mike88]

Hard question. Things are so volatile that the safest leader could fall in a moment. Rajoy and Costa will survive, the first because PSOE and Podemos are right now in internal fighting and the second because the PSD is just waiting for 2018; Merkel is shaky, but, ultimately, i think she will maintained the chancellorship, even if Schulz runs against her; Teresa May i believe is solid; On the other hand, Solberg and Rutte are not very placed in their countries polls... In Norway the SD will likely come back to power, while Rutte is in a very precarious situation... Maybe a second election in Netherlands this year should not be discarted.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Duterte would be screwed if Hillary was taking office, but Trump will probably make sure he sticks around.

[peterthlee]

I chose Solberg as the Labour Party has been rising in the polls. Maybe a misconception as Nordic countries are usually ruled by coalitions.

By the way, it becomes clear that Hollande (FR) and CY Leung (HK) are already DOA (announced not to participate in re-election).

I'm going to say that Kern will survive over 2017 and 2018. Strache will not have chances to realize his dream of being 'Bürgerkanzler'.

[Lachi]

I don't think that Merkel will survive the challenge that the FDP will provide, also with the growing popularity of the far-right in Europe.

I think that Turnbull will most likely be challenged and defeated Gillard style, with Abbott coming back, which will help Labor with a potential landslide in the way it's worked the last few elections (see bottom for details on what I mean).

Zuma will eventually be gotten rid of next year, because muh corruption.

What I mean by Australia's election cycles:
(Landslide->very close election (usually hung Parliament, with the governing being thrown out by their own-> landslide for opposing party, Close election, with leader thrown out, rinse, repeat)

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

One incumbent that could really be hit is Rouhani, who was really hoping for a Democratic win so he could further walk Iran back from isolation and be reelected in May amidst a growing economy. Luckily for him, Ahmadinejad has been barred from running by TPTB, but we all remember the mess the last GOP admin made of Iran politics.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Jammeh was the first to go, congrats 1/3 of you.

[vileplume]

I would watch May. If somehow she loses on a Brexit vote (or on another confidence vote) and things are pushed into an election, I would, actually, watch Maidenhead. I mean, she, probably, wins. But it could get interesting.

Firstly there is virtually no chance of May losing a Brexit vote as there is no way that more than a handful of Labour MPs will vote against the government (especially those with seats in strongly leave voting areas).

Secondly Maidenhead will not even be remotely close in a general election, it's the Tories second safest seat and May will easily clear 60%. You are probably making the mistake that many people make in assuming that all the 48% who voted against Brexit are all liberal pro-immigration internationalists, they aren't. If you instead held a poll asking the public whether they would like to end the free movement of people from Europe you'd get a huge victory for 'yes' of a similar size to the Alternative Vote referendum in 2011 with Windsor and Maidenhead council area also returning a huge 'yes' vote.

Tory remain voters in places like Maidenhead are not the type of voters that are overly upset about Brexit most voted remain only because a)they did what Cameron told them to do or b)because they thought voting leave would be a risky step into the unknown. The type of voters that are really angry about Brexit are almost exclusively 'metropolitan' left wing types because Brexit is seen as an affront to their core values: immigration, multiculturalism etc. Tory voters typically don't care about or are against these things. This  is why Labour is having an extremely difficult time trying to hold together their electoral coalition in a way the Tories are not (the 40% or so of Tory voters who voted remain mostly having accepted the result). Indeed there was a study showing that the small improvement that the Lib Dems have enjoyed since their drubbing at the last election has primarily come from Labour (poll cross tabs show this too) and have made no inroads or even gone further backwards against the Tories. The biggest gap in the electoral market for the Lib Dems are stop-Brexit Labour voters who don't like Corbyn.

The Lib Dems tend to do best when they can a)localise the election (e.g. run a campaign about speed bumps or something) and b)when turnout is low. At a general election turnout will be high and it is much more difficult to localise individual contests in such a nationalised environment, so anything beyond a small Lib Dem recovery is very difficult to see. A realistic approach for them would involve targeting 20 or so seats with a view of winning about half and try to localise as many as possible except in some metropolitan Labour seats like Cambridge, Cardiff Central, Bermondsey and Old Southwark where an anti-Brexit message will go down well. I know that Lib Dem supporters are known for being very optimistic about their party's prospects but thinking that Maidenhead could be even remotely close in the next general election is just plain silly.

[ag]

The Lib Dems tend to do best when they can a)localise the election (e.g. run a campaign about speed bumps or something)

You may be right. But localising the election was, actually, the Goldsmith strategy in Richmond Park. LibDems somehow thought that nationalising it would be a better strategy. I do not recall, how did it end?

[Middle-aged Europe]

It's astonishing to see that people actually believe that Angela Merkel will not "survive" 2017.

Her party constantly maintains a 15% lead over the second largest party. The only coalition models with a predicted majority in opinion polls are CDU/CSU+SPD or CDU/CSU+Greens+FDP (with the runner-up being CDU/CSU+Greens, but that one barely fails to win a majority right now).

Merkel's government has a 51% approval rating. Merkel herself has a 56% approval rating. Her presumptive opponent form the SPD has a 43% approval rating. The leader of the AfD has a 12% approval rating.

The only politicians more popular than her are: The guy who's about to become president in February, Merkel's finance minister (CDU), Merkel's interior minister (CDU), and the guy who will probably become her new foreign minister in February (SPD).

[parochial boy]

The lib dems did pretty well in Witney by making it about Brexit, and there was hardly any labour support there (or in Richmond Park) to begin with.


Even then by elections do not equal national ones, and polling looks good for the Tories at the moment, and Maidenhead is the sort of place that is full of little Englanders

[palandio]

It's astonishing to see that people actually believe that Angela Merkel will not "survive" 2017.

Her party constantly maintains a 15% lead over the second largest party. The only coalition models with a predicted majority in opinion polls are CDU/CSU+SPD or CDU/CSU+Greens+FDP (with the runner-up being CDU/CSU+Greens, but that one barely fails to win a majority right now).

Merkel's government has a 51% approval rating. Merkel herself has a 56% approval rating. Her presumptive opponent form the SPD has a 43% approval rating. The leader of the AfD has a 12% approval rating.

The only politicians more popular than her are: The guy who's about to become president in February, Merkel's finance minister (CDU), Merkel's interior minister (CDU), and the guy who will probably become her new foreign minister in February (SPD).

That leaves of course the possibility of a CDU/CSU-internal coup after a very bad CDU/CSU result (<30%) in the 2017 federal election.

While I wouldn't have excluded this at some point during the last year, this has become quite unlikely in my opinion. CDU/CSU have once again shown that they have an electoral core vote of close to 30%. Additionally they will probably win (back) votes on both the right and the left: Some right-wing voters might come back because of the CDU's perceived right-ward shift on security and immigration. Some center-left voters might vote CDU for the first time to support Merkel (Which in my opinion is a questionable idea, because this is one vote less for the Greens/SPD/etc., who all in all would correspond much better to their political positions than the CDU as a whole). Well, particularly the second consideration might be a thing mostly among some online journalists who aren't the brightest stars in the universe.

But even supposing a bad CDU/CSU result, the CDU has a long history of high leadership stability. And at the moment there seems to be no potential successor able to promote a coup.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's astonishing to see that people actually believe that Angela Merkel will not "survive" 2017.

It's because English language media reporting of German politics - even from respectable outlets like the BBC who used surely assume would be better informed - describes an alternative reality that has remarkably little in common with the real reality.

[Middle-aged Europe]

It's astonishing to see that people actually believe that Angela Merkel will not "survive" 2017.

It's because English language media reporting of German politics - even from respectable outlets like the BBC who used surely assume would be better informed - describes an alternative reality that has remarkably little in common with the real reality.

Am I correct to assume that Merkel's alleged downfall is about to happen due to her immigration policies?

In that case I've got another poll.

"Can Germany cope with the many refugess?"
January 2016: Yes - 37%, No - 60%
January 2017: Yes - 57%, No - 41%

(Source: Forschungsgruppe Wahlen/ZDF)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Am I correct to assume that Merkel's alleged downfall is about to happen due to her immigration policies?

That's what I'm hearing in the media. And they should know. They have journalists standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate and everything.

[DC Al Fine]

The lib dems did pretty well in Witney by making it about Brexit, and there was hardly any labour support there (or in Richmond Park) to begin with.


Even then by elections do not equal national ones, and polling looks good for the Tories at the moment, and Maidenhead is the sort of place that is full of little Englanders

Kind of surprised by that sort of thinking. This isn't Canada, it's the UK. Safe seats are much, much safer in the UK.