The incumbents had a bad year. Will 2025 be different?

CNN
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Billed as the “year of democracy,” 2024 may ultimately be remembered as the year voters sent the incumbents packing.

The biggest single election year to date was also the worst year ever for incumbents. Every governing party facing elections in a developed country this year lost vote share – the first time that has happened since records began – according to an analysis by Financial Times.

In-work benefit used to be a political iron law. Recently, “better the devil you know” has given way to “throw the rascals out.” Voters’ instincts have been to twist, not stick. In the US, Kamala Harris seemed to pay a price for her unwillingness to distance oneself from incumbent President Joe Biden’s policies to Donald Trump’s gains.

What can 2025 bring for the established companies and which factors come into play?

For decades in rich democracies, the surest way to win office was to already hold it. The incumbents were a protected class. Power would change hands between a small number of mainstream parties, mostly after long periods of relative stability.

In new, poorer democracies, things were more volatile. Mainstream parties were weaker and faced constant challenges from upstart rebels, so power changed hands more often.

But this distinction between richer and poorer democracies has blurred. Wealthy democracies have become more unstable, said Ben Ansell, professor of comparative democratic institutions at the University of Oxford.

“What’s happened in wealthy democracies (is that) they’ve become like Latin American democracies or like India (used to be). Now it hurts to be in power. It’s quite new,” Ansell told CNN.

Why was 2024 so difficult for the established companies? Post-mortems have found a common cause of death: inflation.

Prices rose in many countries following the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Driven by a number of factors, including supply disruptions and a rebound in demand, global inflation reached its highest level since the 1990s in 2022. The voters hated it. Although most of the causes were global, the governments that presided over skyrocketing costs paid the price.

Perhaps governments had forgotten how much voters loathe inflation. During and after the last major global shock, the 2008 financial crisis, inflation remained relatively low despite years of huge government stimulus.

Although unemployment rose sharply in the US and Europe after 2008, inflation was broadly stable. The financial pain was more intense for some, but was less diffuse. “Inflation hurts everyone less than unemployment, but it’s so widespread,” Ansell said. As the economist Isabella Weber recalled in the New York Times: “Unemployment weakens governments. Inflation kills them.”

Perhaps lessons can be learned from Mexico, which elected Claudia Sheinbaum of the ruling Morena party, a rare bright spot for Latin America’s incumbents amid a long string of defeats. To curb inflation, her party introduced price controls to cap the price of basic groceries in 2022 and renewed the measure last month.

Although mainstream economists are uneasy about price controls, Weber, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, points out that Western countries have already implemented a global price ceiling on Russian oil. In the face of overlapping crises, this taboo may crumble.

If inflation really was the culprit, this could be good news for tomorrow’s incumbents. As prices stabilize, wages catch up and voters adjust new costs for eggsthose in office – apart from more price shocks – should have an easier time in the coming years. At least that’s the theory.

But that’s not the only theory. The defeat or retreat of the established across the globe cannot be explained by materialistic factors alone. Cultural, structural forces are also at play, which can make volatility the rule, not the exception.

“There’s a generational trend in many democracies, toward much lower party loyalty. There’s much higher turnout between elections and back again,” Roberto Foa, co-director of the Center for the Future of Democracy at the University of Cambridge, told CNN.

This erosion of partisan loyalties has opened the field to new players who flout the old rules of the game and chip away at its norms. Vicente Valentim, an assistant professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said this is happening at both the political level, such as the backlash against immigration and gender equality, and the procedural, such as refusing to announce an election or casting doubt on the integrity of a vote .

Once that spirit is out of its lamp, it’s “really hard to go back to the process of normalizing these previously stigmatized views,” Valentim told CNN. “There’s no incentive for politicians to stop doing it once they see it’s working.”

If the supply changes, so does the demand. One explanation for rising volatility is that voters have become more like consumers: hard to please, hungry for satisfaction, always shopping around.

Maybe you can map changed voter habits to changed consumer habits. Instead of going to a small selection of brick-and-mortar stores to buy a fixed selection of goods, many in affluent democracies have grown accustomed to being brought what they want, when they want. Amazon and Netflix spoil their customers with choices; voters can expect the democracies to catch up.

Having to “choose between the two shops that have always been on the street” – one on the left, one on the right – “seems very mid-20th century in an early 21st century world that we’re used to to in every other way,” Ansell said.

A brief survey of upcoming elections suggests that 2025 could be just as tough for the established democracies. After failing to hold his coalition together for a full term, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is all but certain to be ousted in February’s snap election, called after he lost a confidence vote this month.

Canadian voters are also likely to end Justin Trudeau’s nearly decade-long premiership. The election is due to be held on or before October 20, but could be brought forward if his coalition also falls apart.

Polls suggest centre-left Trudeau could be replaced by conservative firebrand Pierre Poilievre. A similar story is expected to unfold in Australia, where the Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese faces a fierce challenge from the Liberal Party’s Peter Dutton.

In Europe, next year’s picture is somewhat lopsided, as Kremlin-linked propaganda campaigns seek to boost the chances of candidates more friendly to Moscow. Despite what many in the West see as an impressive first term as president, Moldova’s Maia Sandu won re-election by the slimmest of margins in October. Whether her pro-Western party can retain its majority in May’s general election is less clear. The Kremlin has officially rejected accusations from Moldova that it orchestrated and financed a widespread campaign of interference this year.

Romania must also decide how to proceed after its Supreme Court annulled the first round of the presidential election, which it said was marred by Russian interference. A victory for far-right ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu – a virtual unknown before the fall – is still on the cards when new elections are held. Russia has denied interfere in the electoral process.

Things may be different in Latin America. Polls suggest Daniel Noboa is better placed than most incumbents to win a second term when Ecuador votes in February, but blackouts and street violence have bolstered his main challenger, Luisa Gonzalez. And while Xiomara Castro – Honduras’ first female president – could win again in November, observers say warn she shows authoritarian tendencies.

And then 2025 may look like a slimmed-down version of 2024, with fewer elections but the incumbents continuing to fight.

A charitable reading would say that this is no bad thing. If voters are unhappy with their leaders, they should oust them.

Adam Przeworski, a political scientist, once defined democracy as “a system in which parties lose elections.” (This does not apply in Belarus next month, when Alexander Lukashenko – president since 1994 – will be certain to win another four-year term. Polls in Belarus are generally seen as neither free nor fair.)

But endless defeats – like Lukashenko’s endless victories – should set alarm bells ringing. Elections send signals to governments, Ansell said. “You have to be able to punish people, but you also have to be able to reward them.”

If the election becomes all stick and no carrot, the process risks descending into sound and fury to the detriment of politicians and voters alike.