Reading Time: 9 minutesEurope’s democratic landscape in 2025 cannot be divided neatly into countries that are democratic and countries that are not. The revised dataset instead reveals several distinct patterns: established democracies that have lost part of their previous strength, countries that have improved modestly from relatively weak…

Reading Time: 8 minutesA country can improve compared with its own past and still remain behind its neighbours. It can also retain one of the region’s strongest election administrations while losing ground in media freedom, public debate and the broader conditions of political competition. This is why the…

Reading Time: 9 minutesPart 2. From Emotion to Political Rhetoric: How the Speech Builds Its Message Is the speech positive or negative? A first look at the Bing sentiment dictionary produces an apparently surprising result. Of the words recognised by the lexicon, 197 are classified as positive and…

Reading Time: 7 minutesPart 1. From Words to Themes: Mapping the Vocabulary of a Political Speech Introduction: What can text analysis tell us about a political speech? Political speeches are designed not merely to transmit information. They construct stories, identify groups, assign responsibility, evoke emotions, recall selected episodes…

Reading Time: 5 minutesIntroduction: why sentiment belongs to election forensics Election forensics is often associated with numbers: turnout, vote shares, invalid ballots, polling-station anomalies, unusual statistical patterns or inconsistencies between official databases and polling-station records. These are essential elements of electoral verification. However, election results are not produced…

Reading Time: 5 minutesUvod: zašto sentiment pripada izbornoj forenzici Kada se govori o izbornoj forenzici, najčešće se misli na analizu rezultata: izlaznost, glasove po biračkim mestima, nevažeće listiće, neobične obrasce u distribuciji glasova ili neslaganja između zapisnika i objavljenih podataka. To je važan, ali samo jedan deo slike….

Reading Time: 6 minutesIntroduction: election forensics begins before election night When election integrity is discussed, public attention usually focuses on election day and election night: whether polling stations opened on time, whether polling-station records were completed correctly, whether votes were counted accurately, and whether official results match independent…

Reading Time: 3 minutesElectoral integrity does not begin and end on election day. It is a cycle in which every step must leave a trace: voting, counting, official records, data publication, independent analysis, institutional review and, where necessary, legal remedies. If one part of the cycle is missing,…