Next week's election calendar

Let's look at a few interesting elections being held around the world from March 3rd to the 9th.

They run the spectrum of electoral scales: thousands of candidates representing hundreds of parties fighting for more than 75 million votes in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to an election with tens of thousands of voters select 14 members of the Micronesian congress, all of whom run and sit as independents.

March 4 & 8: Manipur, India: The Indian state of Manipur begins its elections, which will run from March 4 to 8. The only opinion poll taken last October suggested that the incumbents, the Indian National Congress, were set to experience heavy losses primarily to the Bharatiya Janata Party (the BJP), the party of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Of course, so much time has passed since October that it's difficult to be sure what's happening at all. Results will not be declared until March 11.

March 4 & 8: Uttar Pradesh, India: Uttar Pradesh joins Manipur in holding two rounds of its elections, phases 6 and 7 of its vote to elect its legislative assembly. Polling is more frequent here, but erratic in its findings: polls show that either the social democratic Samajwadi Party and the centre-left Indian National Congress will win enough seats to win a majority, or the Hindu nationalist BJP will instead do so. More here than elsewhere, it's safe to not read too much into the polls.

Elections in Uttar Pradesh are always impressive in their scale. Thousands of candidates are battling for the 403 seats, with at many parties contesting 100 seats or more. Last time, 6,839 candidates split the more than 75 million votes running for more than 200 parties, and the Samajwadi Party won 224 of the 403 seats with 29 per cent of the vote.

March 7: Federated States of Micronesia: These Micronesian elections will select their congress. All independents, 10 members are elected using first-past-the-post in 10 constituencies around the islands, while 4 members, called Senators, will be chosen using a variant on proportional representation to represent the four states. The president and vice-president are elected by these members of congress, with only the 4 Senators eligible to be candidates. (This part will not be held until 2019, as the last presidential vote was held on 2015.)