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General elections will be held in Gapolania to elect the President and 155 members of the Senate. The elections are scheduled to take place on August 22nd 2021.

Background

The previous general election, on August 2017, saw voters elect Mosè Maggiacomo from the Justice and Restoration coalition for a second term, with the candidate gathering 53.17% of all votes in the first round, over twice as much as his rival, Namal Emenchà. Maggiacomo's presidency has been generally viewed as "good" or "very good" in polls conducted between 2017 and 2021, although after the involvement of the ruling coalition in the Arucian diplomatic scandal the approval ratings fell to a record low in the history of Maggiacomo's presidency, reaching 30%.

The government was also criticized for not fulfilling the promises it gave during the 2017 elections - commonly listed issues were: increasing gender inequality and gender pay gap, difficulties in access to education in villages and towns below 100'000 inhabitants, high risk of uneployment for citizens aged 18-30 and deteriorating quality of the environment.

A report published in February 2021 described the world democracy as "worsening", highlighting rise of authoritarianism globally and regionally, including Gapolania. Among the biggest concerns were centralization of power and corruption, as well as an increase of media cenzorship.

On 15th May 2021, one of the main parties in the government, Blue Hibiscus, announced it left the coalition and will run independently in the upcoming elections. A third largest force in the Senate, Blue Hibiscus is one of the oldest parties in the nation continuously represented in the Senate, formed after the Hibiscus Revolution. On 10th June 2021, the party's leader, Marcelo Segantù, officially presented a new political alliance, Movement for Change.

With Mosè Maggiacomo's second term coming to and end, he isn't eligible to candidate another time. On 22nd May 2021, the ruling coalition run an internal contest, which saw Clemente Nacci, the Minister of Transportation, win with 63,5% of the vote. Only 37 years old, he is currently the youngest person in Gapolania to run for the presidential office.

Electoral system

The president of Gapolania is elected using a two-round system, with a candidate required to receive more than 50% of all the votes in order to win. If no candidates receive more than a half of the votes, a runoff takes place between the top two. The president is limited to two terms, consecutive or not. Any citizen of country at least 18 years old on they day of the elections can cast a vote.

There are a total of 155 seats of the Senate, elected via 12 governorates of Gapolania and a capital domain, Nassea. The number of seats are distributed in relation to the population of the administrative unit. Seats were allocated using the Boeri method of proportional representation. There is no legal threshold, although there is a rule that the first seat can never be a remainder seat, which means that there is an effective threshold of 100% divided by the total number of seats (with 155 seats to allocate, it is currently 0.65%). There's a gender quota of 40%, meaning that 62 seats need to be filled by women. Despite several tries, ethnic minorities, such as the Chanuche are not affected by quotas - as of 2021, the Chanuche, representing nearly 10% of the total population, have only 6 seats (4% of the total seats) in the Senate.