how did the Singer Youssou N'Dour get on in his Senegal presidential bid

This week the Senegal elections took place.
IFES has a quick guide to the basics.
The official national press agency has the latest news in French.

For some user discussion and online videos see the site created by L'association des Blogueurs du Sénégal
Google also has a special page with news stories and discussions of web trends.
More news stories can be found on all.africa.com
France 24
Le Monde
and the New York Times
Finally further English commentary, including a recent briefing paper can be found on the Chatham house website.

Yemen elections 2012

The Yemen presidential elections were held on 21st february. As there was only one candidate the results focussed on voter turnout. for discussion of the system try these resources.
Yemen Fox gives a glowing account of the elections.However , the BBC reported violence.
Al Jazeera has a blog with images and coment.
For background information on the political situation see the
IFES site which has basic facts about the electoral system.
International IDEA website has some publications

Turkmenistan elections- were they a sham?

Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov improves on his performance in 2007 election, but there are accusations of fraud.
See some commentary on politics in the region on the Chatham House website.
Eurasia net has articles and discussion
The Voice of Russia website has coverage in English. However do remeber this site is supported by the Russian government.
other monitoring bodies covering human rights in the region include:
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
Transparency International rated it as one of the most corrupt nations in 2010
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked Turkmenistan at 165 out of 167 countries of the world in its Democracy Index for 2011

NDI has also established programmes to improve the state of democracy in the region.

Former finance leader winds Finland's presidential election

Last week the winner of Finland's presidential election was announced. Here are some recommended sites for finding out more.
Ministry of Justice Finland. Has the resiults for each round of voting plus background on the system used.
For up to date news coverage and analysis see
Helsingin Sanomat - International Edition. English Language analysis

Finland press. Other links to Finnish language resources.

For examples of past electoral results see Statistics Finland which has a large election data section.
The European elections database also has a section for Finland where you can find historic materials.
Electoral geography has some interesting mappings of past and recent elecions.

Kuwait elections coming soon.

On the 2nd feb Kuwait will be holding Parliamentary elections.
The official Kuwait news Agency has press releases in English about events.

organisations observing the conduct of the elections include
Kuwait transparency society (site in Arabic only)
Kuwait Journalists association (Arabic only)
New site Middle East online has predicted increased youth involvement becuase of the Arab Spring.

TEIM election watch has also produced a useful pre-election briefing.
Background on the political climate can also be found on the Carnegie Endowment website.

The Kuwait politics database from Michael Herb, Georgia State University. Also has an excellent collection of election results from the 1960s onwards.

Taiwan elections- send voters mad!

On Jan. 14, Taiwan re-elected President Ma. Interestingly the Telegraph reported increased cases of 'election' illness syndrom. However, here are some more serious suggestions for studying the resorts and political climate.
General background information can be found on the IFES guide.
The Official election commission website has a good English language section. get the official election results by district.
The Taipei times has recent news stories. Including summaries of reports from watchdogs monitoring the election.
The Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) also has reports from its observation mission. and further discussion on its facebook site.

For some background information on the possible impact of the elections. See this report from CSIS on relations with the USA.

Alan Romberg Chinese Leadership monitor article. Also avvailable more publications on Taiwan and China from the Hoover Institution.
Wilson center - coverage of the elections and Taiwan in general
Finally get some discussion on The Taiwan 2012 blog is produced in partnership with the School of Politics and International Relations, the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies and the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham

Arab spring - useful sources for tracing electoral reform information

In December the EU launched its own response to the Arab spring
This memo highlights reactions from the EU to events in specific nations.It includes details of aid.
Here are some other recommended starting points.
News services.
Guardian blogs and news analysis from the Middle East. There is also a separate news stories page.
Aljazeera - includes live blogs and video content
BBC news
Lede Blog from New York Times.
Speigel Online
Economist - includes access to many articles from the journal. See the interesting Shoe throwers index from Feb 2011 for graphs and predictions.
Other think tanks with analysis and reports include:
The Carnegie Endowment.
Council on Foreign Relations.
ASWAT
NDI
Brookings Institution.
Chatham House. For instance see the transcript of a recent event on Israel and the Arab spring Which was held in London In December 2011.