Whether left or right, regardless of how long they’ve been in power, incumbent governments around the world have been defeated by disillusioned voters this year in what’s known as a “super year” for elections.
Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election was the latest in a long line of losses for the ruling parties in 2024, with people in nearly 70 countries voting for nearly half the world’s population.
The issues fueling voter discontent vary widely, though since the COVID-19 pandemic there has been near-universal unease as people and businesses face tighter prices, cash-strapped governments and increased immigration. Hoy struggles to get to his feet.
“There’s an overall sense of disillusionment with political elites, seeing them as out of touch, which cuts across ideological lines,” said Richard Wike, director of global attitudes research at the Pew Research Center.
He noted that a Pew poll of 24 countries found that the appeal of democracy itself is slipping as voters report growing economic distress and a sense that no political party truly represents them. .
“Many factors are contributing to this, but certainly feelings about the economy and inflation are a big factor,” Wike said.
Harvard University political scientist Steven Levitsky said that since the pandemic in 2020, incumbents have been removed from office in 40 of 54 elections in Western democracies, revealing “a huge current loss.”
In Britain, centre-right conservatives suffered their worst result since 1832 in the July election, returning the centre-left Labor Party to power after 14 years.
But just across the English Channel, the far-right shook up the governing parties of France and Germany, the EU’s biggest and most powerful members, in June elections for the 27-nation bloc’s parliament.
The results prompted French President Emmanuel Macron to call for parliamentary elections in hopes of halting the rise of the far-right at home. The anti-immigration National Rally Party won the first round, but coalition and strategy voting dropped it to third place in the second round, leaving a weak government over a divided legislature.
In Asia, a group of South Korean liberal opposition parties led by the Democratic Party defeated the ruling conservative People’s Power Party in April parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile, India’s Narendra Modi was widely expected to easily win a third term in June but instead voters turned away from his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, due to She lost her majority in Parliament, although she managed to stay in power. With the help of allies.
Similarly, in October Japanese voters punished the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled the country almost uninterruptedly since 1955.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will remain in power, but the larger-than-expected loss ended the LDP’s one-sided rule, allowing the opposition to achieve policy changes long opposed by conservatives. .
“If you ask me to describe Japan in space, it’s not very difficult,” said Paul Nadeau, an adjunct assistant professor at Temple University’s Japan campus in Tokyo.
“Voters were punishing a ruling party because of a corruption scandal, and it gave them an opportunity to express a lot of frustration that they already had.”
Globally, however, conclusions are difficult to draw.
“It’s pretty much the same in different situations, different countries, different elections – incumbents are cracking their shins,” he said. “And I don’t have a good big-picture explanation for why that is.”
Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said inflation had been a major driver of “the biggest wave of anti-incumbent voting” – although the reasons behind the backlash could also be “broader and more widespread”.
“This could be directly related to the long-term effects of the COVID pandemic — a wave of ill health, disruption to education, disruption to workplace experiences and so on, making people everywhere less happy, and that It is being taken out on the governments,” he said.
“A kind of election-long COVID.”
In South Africa, high unemployment and inequality dramatically eroded support for the African National Congress, which had ruled for three decades since the end of apartheid. The party led by Nelson Mandela lost its parliamentary majority in the May elections and was forced to form alliances with opposition parties.
Other elections in Africa presented a mixed picture, said Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at the international affairs think tank Chatham House, partly overshadowed by countries that had no doubts about re-election. Like Rwanda’s long-time president, Paul Kagame. 99% of the votes were received.
In African countries with strong democratic institutions, however, the pattern of punishing those responsible persists, Vines said.
“Countries with strong institutions – South Africa, Senegal, Botswana – have seen either a government of national unity or a party change of government,” he said.
In Botswana, voters unexpectedly ousted a party that had ruled for 58 years since independence from Britain in October elections.
Across the continent, “you’ve now got voters who have no memory of decolonization or the end of apartheid and so have different priorities, who are also feeling the pressure to make ends meet,” Vines said.
In Latin America, one major country stands to stem the tide of anti-incumbency – Mexico.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, one term limited, chose a member of his own party, Claudia Scheinbaum, to succeed him. Sheinbaum easily won the presidency in the June elections.
Wike noted that Mexico was one of the few countries in a Pew survey where voters reported being satisfied with economic conditions.
Some newcomers to office have already found that the honeymoon after their victories has been short-lived, as the public has increasingly focused on them.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has seen his approval ratings plummet from a naïve electorate who want lower prices and better public services – but are deeply skeptical of politicians’ will and ability to deliver change. are
Ford, of the University of Manchester, said it was a problem for democracy when voters, whose job it is to hold governments to account, are so quick to judge.
“If the electorate is the electoral equivalent of a hanging judge, hanging politicians whether they are guilty or innocent, then what incentive do governments have to try?” he asked. “Angels and demons alike get out, but being an angel is hard.”
Trump first came to power as a challenger in the 2016 election, and then lost as an incumbent to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. This year, he defeated Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, who entered the race late after the president unexpectedly dropped out.
Trump’s victory is one of the crowning achievements of the conservative populist movement. But another icon of the cause, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, saw his own party suffer its worst performance in decades in this year’s EU elections, showing that any movement from a reactionary Not safe.
Temple University’s Nadeau suggested that analysts may have previously misunderstood global election trends — analyzing them as ideological shifts — “when it was all really anti-incumbency.”
“Maybe it has always been anti-government, and we were just misdiagnosing it,” he said.
