Lessons From The Election Year

And what comes next for global democracy and political parties

Leaving the 2024 polling station (Photo by Elliott Stallion on Unsplash)

Before we start, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or simply Happy Holidays. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this mega holiday feature article for your amusement.

If you have been following this Substack for a considerable amount of time, you might have noticed I spent a considerable amount of time and effort covering elections. That’s a feature, not a bug.

In the mother of all election years, over 4 billion people headed to the polls in either general, presidential, or legislative elections. In mathematical terms, that is at least half of the global population and represents 60% of people living in electoral autocracies or democracies of various kinds.

For keen readers, you might have noticed that being reflected in my Memeing The World segment, I write about new elections popping up around the world on a near-weekly basis. Some elections bring long-foreseen results for incumbent autocrats, from Russia’s election in March that guaranteed an electoral victory for Vladimir Putin, to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro winning a disputed victory in July. Some brought predictable results, like Mexico electing Claudia Sheinbaum as the country’s first female president, and the UK electing Keir Starmer after 14 years of Tory rule. Some elections weren’t supposed to happen this year, from Iran electing a moderate president after his predecessor died in a helicopter crash, to both France and Japan holding a snap election that brought varying degrees of success to incumbent governments. Of course, who could forget the turbulent ones, from the EU elections that saw a sizable rise for the far-right, to the US elected convicted felon Donald Trump to the presidency for a second time?

Suffice to say, it has been a lot for the world to swallow this year. Not to mention the two post-Christmas elections that are yet to happen before the end of 2024. But with every national election, pundits and political scientists bring the obligatory post-election analysis/dissection on what happened and what to do next. We have focused a lot this year on the details, individuals, and electoral systems of countries across the globe engaging in the biggest annual polling day in recent history, but we should now spend some time looking back at the themes and features that dominated voters through the past 12 months.

As comparative politics experts and election gurus start pouring their reflections, here is my food for thought on what the people think, and the gradual shift in politics we all need to look out for in 2025 and beyond.

For most political analysts, an anti-establishment angst has been sweeping the globe. Not only did the US experience its third straight presidential election in which the incumbent party lost both the presidency and Congress, the UK’s overwhelming rejection of the Conservative Party, the Botswana Democratic Party lost power for the first time in 60 years, and South Korea’s legislative elections that brought the opposition to power (Which was useful in overturning the martial law decree and impeaching its president months later) were powerful examples of incumbents being kicked out of office. Even for those who weren’t kicked out of power, from the African National Congress in South Africa, India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, and Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party all lost their majorities and were forced to work in a coalition government. Based on research from the Financial Times, every single governing party in the developed world that stood for election this year lost vote share.

One major factor is post-pandemic economic policy and inflation. We have discussed before how post-pandemic inflation was not necessarily caused by one particular factor. The Fed’s monetary policy, the war in Ukraine, supply chain economics, COVID stimulus packages, as well as pent-up demand during and after the pandemic, all of these reasons were simplified by the voters as the incumbent government’s fault.

In turn, voters voted with their wallets. Quite decisively and across different nations. Pew Research Center made this interesting remark as it analyzed its surveys in multiple countries.

A survey we conducted in 34 countries earlier this year illustrated the extent of global economic gloom. Across these nations, a median of 64% of adults said their national economy was in bad shape. In several nations that held elections in 2024 – including France, Japan, South Africa, South Korea and the UK – more than seven-in-ten expressed this view.

Inflation was an especially important issue in this year’s elections, although economic concerns were prevalent in many countries before the post-pandemic wave of global price increases. The past two decades have seen financial crises, the Great Recession, the COVID-19 economic downturn, inflation and ongoing economic inequality, all of which may have shaped the mood in nations around the globe.

Not only that, people don’t think the current political situation is benefiting them and show a passive view of how democracy works. People have various views on how politicians aren’t doing enough for them, elected officials don’t care about others except themselves, and they often break more promises than keep them. That is reflected in the opinion polls, as represented by Pew.

But the economy wasn’t the only thing driving voter discontent. Our global surveys over the past few years have highlighted a broader frustration with the functioning of representative democracy. Across 31 nations we surveyed in 2024, a median of 54% of adults were dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in their country. And in several high-income nations, dissatisfaction has increased significantly over the past three years.

Our surveys have shown that many people feel disconnected from political leaders and institutions. Large majorities in many nations believe elected officials don’t care what people like them think. Many say there is no political party that represents their views well. And large shares say people like them have little or no influence on politics in their country.

Interestingly enough, you might be surprised to learn that’s not the case. According to research by Robert Thomson (If you are reading this, professor: Hello!), political parties do fulfill many of their promises in manifestos as actual policy.

From the Comparative Pledges Project (Credit: Professor Thomson’s slides)

Fulfillment and non-fulfillment of pledges in different countries (Credit: Professor Thomson’s slides)

Based on these graphs, the general trend among Western countries is that political parties maintain their promises and commit to actual policies to fulfill their pledges. Of course, alternative factors like previous vote share and party ideology play a role in voters’ decision to punish governing parties, but the two factors that apply to incumbents here are the state of the economy and globalization.

Some are warranted frustrations, such as globalization affecting jobs in Western countries as multinational corporations outsource them to Asian countries like China and India for cheap labor. In other instances, the angst is generated through vibes. For example, despite the US enjoying a bullish year in the stock market, and inflation numbers experiencing a bumpy decline, consumer sentiment tells a different story. For most of the year, Democrats have been feeling much better about the economy than Republicans pre-election. Once Trump went into office, there was a sudden jump in positive consumer sentiment among Republicans, which corresponded with a sudden fall for Democrats. It’s not just the economy stupid, it’s the vibes that count.

Many pundits have credited distrust in political authority and economic anxiety (TM) as a recent electoral trend, primarily because Trump won the popular vote and suddenly everyone is interested in global elections. But as Thomas Carothers from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank put it, it’s not a new or widespread phenomenon.

Certainly, various incumbent leaders or parties were defeated during the year, most prominently in the United States and the United Kingdom, though also in Botswana, Panama, and Sri Lanka. But incumbents have been doing badly in elections for quite a few years, as a result of voter dissatisfaction over issues such as ineffective governance during the pandemic and the ravages of the 2008 global financial crisis. In Latin America for example, incumbent presidents lost every election between 2018 and 2023, except one (Paraguay in 2023). Moreover, a sizeable number of incumbent leaders, parties, or candidates endorsed by the outgoing leaders were reelected this year, including in El Salvador, Finland, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Palau, and Taiwan. In India, Japan, and South Africa, while ruling parties were electorally dented, they did maintain power.

Economic discontent and frustrations with the current system are the major factors, but three more concepts influenced voters’ behavior before heading to the polls.

Polarized discourse on social issues has been a particular factor in generating polarization, from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party, which centers its campaign on defending French culture and civilization from immigrants and outsiders, to Austria’s Freedom Party, which opposes LGBTQ+ rights as a cornerstone of its platform, to the US’s plethora of culture wars. 

AI deepfakes and disinformation have become an increasingly alarming player in elections, from Elon Musk buying Twitter/X and turning it into a pro-Trump megaphone, to Romania’s Constitutional Court annulling the results from its first round of voting after evidence of Russian interference in the election. Not to mention, the influence of billionaires like Musk would be a particular subject of interest in the next few years, as the Tesla owner has openly supported the UK’s Reform party and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany, both aligning with the far-right.

International conflict and isolationism have contributed to dividing political ideologies. On one hand, the Russo-Ukrainian war has prompted the ideological right to be more tepid in its support of Ukraine; Slovakia’s new president Peter Pellegrini was elected into office on a Ukraine aid skeptic platform. On the political left, the Israel-Hamas war has divided the progressive left from its more centrist counterparts, with both the UK’s Labor Party and the Democrats in the US losing voters over their approach to Israel. 

Without a doubt, in many Western democracies, populist parties and nationalists won big. Right-wing populist parties gained seats in the European parliamentary elections, Austria saw the far-right Freedom Party winning its best-ever result and a higher vote share than any other party, while the AfD party became the first far-right political party to win a state election since World War II. Many right-wing nationalists and populist parties run on a hardline platform on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, as well as national pride.

Left-wing populists also saw small gains this year, most notably Mexico’s Morena party which capitalized on the success of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Morena won outright majorities in both chambers of Congress, Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first female president, and the party passed controversial judicial reforms despite public concerns.

Writing for NPR, Ben Ansell put it thus on what the year was like between democracy and nationalism.

National elections are now dominated not by liberals seeking to expand individual rights and international freedoms, but by nationalists emphasizing border control, national identity and the need to abandon international commitments. Such nationalists are no longer confined to the "periphery" of the West — Hungary, Poland and Turkey — but to its long-standing core: the U.K., France, Germany and the United States.

However, looking at recent trends and how they affect the health of global democracy, Carothers pointed out that such shifts don’t show the big picture.

Overall, the rightward shift was primarily a European and U.S. story. In other parts of the world, the picture was far more mixed. Left-of-center parties gained or held ground in various places, such as in Botswana, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Uruguay. In other countries, such as India and Indonesia, the contending parties did not fall clearly on a left-right spectrum.

With regard to the implications for the overall health of democracy, the year’s results were not decisive in one direction or the other. Many of the elections did not signal noticeable change for democracy’s basic condition. This was true in the various authoritarian states where elections did little more than underscore their existing undemocratic political condition, such as in Russia and Rwanda. It was also true in numerous well-established democracies where elections were essentially democratic business as usual, including Finland, Ireland, Taiwan, and Uruguay.

Moreover, there are more factors representing the health of democracies. We have covered in numerous instances the threat of a second Trump term, and how his actions are leading to a backsliding of American democracy. But there is good news for democracy as well! In Senegal, the country’s young population backed the opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye into power after a failed attempt by the incumbent president to delay elections. The first peaceful transfer of power in Botswana, following the outgoing president’s announcement that he was stepping down from office, marked a bright spot for the country’s long-standing democracy. Bangladesh’s incumbent prime minister Sheikh Hasina, despite winning a fifth term at the beginning of this year marred with political suppression, fled the country in August following massive student-led protests against a quota system for government jobs.

This year, we need to recognize that voters want a showman. As we have learned from the Biden administration and the Democrats’ election campaign, enacting policies and doing the right thing doesn’t guarantee voters will support them. Even though many Republicans did not vote for Biden’s inflation reduction act and infrastructure deal, both with bipartisan support, they nonetheless exploited the wins and likely contributed to their victory this November. Leaders should not sit back and let the results speak for themselves, they need to adopt more of an in-your-face approach to policy successes while conveniently ignoring personal failings by blaming it on their successor, something Donald Trump has mastered over the years.

Now, to paraphrase Kamala Harris, let’s get unburdened by what has been, and heed some tidbits of prediction I might provide on what is yet to come. For lucky incumbents who have spared the fate of electoral judgment, they might experience a thrashing next year. Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Germany’s Olaf Scholz are prime targets for punishment by the voters and get ready to say hello to Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre and Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Expect swinging between parties as the new norm, voters become frustrated with the new incumbents now holding high office, once they believe the new political reality isn’t suiting them either. Treat electoral divisions not as a simple left-vs-right issue, consider them as center-vs-extreme. For example, over the summer, we saw Le Pen’s National Rally in France being kept out of power by parties on the center and the left. Months later, the National Rally joined the New Popular Front (A coalition of left-leaning parties) to end the premiership of Michel Barnier after just three months. Say goodbye to the political spectrum, and meet the horseshoe theory, where the extreme left and right are more likely to work together than their ideologically tamer counterparts.

At the present moment, the energy is surging for the populist right, while the liberal centrist left has no plan to tackle the issue. There are three ways I think political parties in liberal democracies will choose to respond to the new alignment.

One of the easy ways for the liberal left to counteract the populist right is to make their version of left-wing populism. On one side, it has worked pretty well in Latin America, and we have seen ample room for left-wing populism to foster in Western democracies. Take the recent cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, netizens from both the left and the right have united in their hatred against the US healthcare system. Pundits from the right, like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, have tried to sway the narrative as a liberal fanatic craze, but the comments tell a very different story.

"I'm a Republican. I voted for Trump. I am unsubscribing from Ben. They not like us," one wrote in the comments.

…

"Everyone is angry at the these insurance companies," one person commented. "If you've never lost someone or been plunged into debt because of them, you can't possibly understand. It's despicable what they get away with. I don't wish death on them but I'll bet you good money, that man probably lost someone he loved because of united healthcares denial policies."

…

"The fact that [M]att is trying to paint this as a left wing issue, when theres clearly bipartisan celebrations going on, just goes to show how out of touch celebrities are, whether on the right or left, with regular everyday ordinary people," one user said.

…

One user also told Shapiro that their father, who was a staunch Republican, probably would have agreed with the pundit, "but unfortunately, he died from cancer after being denied a treatment that could have saved his life because it was considered 'experimental.'"

…

"I'm not buying this 'left vs right' s--- anymore Ben, I want health care for my family," one user commented on the video.

"As a conservative, I'm sick of rich elitist destroying the family unit. Quite literally. I'm proud the left and right have united. I may not vote the same way but damn it I can agree we are tired of being pushed around," another said.

A third told Shapiro, "Just because 'the left' likes something doesn't mean you have to instinctively hate it. Wake up and read the room bro."

…

"Imagine being so blatantly in the wrong that you manage to unite two opposing ends of the political spectrum during one the most divided periods in recent memory," one comment read.

Left-wing populism, something that resembles a platform promoted by Bernie Sanders, could kick liberal parties into full gear by demonizing CEOs and the elites that have profited out of the American healthcare system, and gain more sympathetic voters united behind their cause. But a word of caution, populist leaders have to be engaging and able to reach a wider variety of voters instead of coddling their base. Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a good example, his insistence with pushing his agenda ultimately led to a disastrous election performance in 2019 and eventually led to Corbyn’s banishment from the party he once led.

Corbyn’s successor Keir Starmer represents a second option for liberal parties: Wait until the fire burns itself out. Starmer’s win this year was less due to his party’s platform or his charisma (Which there was none), it was because people were sick of the Tories and wanted an alternative. Since people elected populist right-wing leaders in charge of their countries, they provide a proud endorsement for everything they stand to support and do. As Jonathan V. Last of the Bulwark put it after Trump won the election: Democrats should not try to save America from itself, and that logic could be used by pro-democracy liberals in the years going forward.

On Tuesday, voters rewarded one of these parties and punished the other. What should Democrats learn from that outcome? One simple thing:

Do not expend political capital trying to protect voters from Trump.

Americans listened to everything Trump said over the last two years. They heard him talk about abandoning Ukraine, imposing massive tariffs, putting RFK Jr. in charge of healthcare policy, and rounding up millions of immigrants and either deporting them or putting them into camps.

A majority of voters affirmatively chose those policies.

So let Trump implement them. Let’s walk through what that would mean, one policy at a time.

…

At the end of the day, that should be the precept that guides Democrats’ decisions about when and how to spend capital trying to obstruct Trump during the next two years.

If Trump is trying to break the rule of law, then yes, Democrats should attempt to stop him.

If Trump is taking an action that would hurt a Democratic voting group or a Democratic state, then yes, they should attempt to stop him.

But for everything else? Democrats should stand back and stand by. And then, when the fit hits the shan, they should demagogue the ever-living-crap out of Trump for any bad outcome that occurs, anywhere.

Make him own it. All of it.

The American people have chosen. They should not be insulated from the consequences of their choice.

When voters finally taste the rotten political meals that were way past their sell-by date, liberal parties should not be condescending with a smug on their faces and say: I told you so! They should point out what the voters did wrong, and why these policies are detrimental to their well-being and the country’s future, before providing an alternative vision. Hope and change is good and well, but it only works when the other guys are in charge.

Given the potential changes, I believe the third option is the most practical solution for the current moment: More centrist parties need to align on shared policies, which maintain a concerted stance on issues such as foreign policy no matter which government takes charge. In a move that might be challenging for many parties in democratic countries, the center-left and center-right need to team up. As we have seen with the Republican Party in the US, trying to mingle and negotiate with the more extreme factions would result in a complete takeover by the populist and nationalistic rank.

Quoting the lyrics of “The Snake,” a song Donald Trump has often recited in his rallies to oppose immigration.

“Take me in, oh tender woman ,

“Take me in, for heaven’s sake,

“Take me in oh tender woman,” sighed the snake.

Now she clutched him to her bosom, “You’re so beautiful,” she cried.

“But if I hadn’t brought you in by now you might have died.”

Now she stroked his pretty skin and then she kissed and held him tight .

But instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite.

“Take me in, oh tender woman,

“Take me in, for heaven’s sake,

“Take me in oh tender woman,” sighed the snake.

“I saved you,” cried that woman.

“And you've bit me even, why?

“You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.”

“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin,

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

That brings me to my final bit of foresight, the divergence of populism into what I would call primitive and pragmatic populism. I get that some readers might object to me using the term “pragmatic” next to populism, given the definition of the term is completely juxtaposed with the actions and words of populists. However, I believe a divergence could be subtle but inevitable. On one side, adopters of primitive populism will continue a similar pattern of small actions but big words, think of Donald Trump and everything he has said and done, specifically the border wall at the end of his first term. Then there are examples of pragmatic populism, from Javier Milei’s “chainsaw approach” to Argentina’s economy to Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s moderate stances, and El Salvador Nayib Bukele’s harsh crackdown on drug gangs. Of course, there is significant blowback on all three case studies: Milei’s economic approach has caused rising unemployment, Italian critics have accused Meloni of playing the moderate but winking at the extremes, while Bukele’s crackdown has been fiercely criticized for its human rights abuses.

For many parties and leaders who are elected this year, getting into power is the easy thing, governing and maintaining public approval will be a much more daunting task.