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The inflation caused by the pandemic appears to be pushing voters to throw out leaders.
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Incumbent governments have been punished in Britain, France, India, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.
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Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris is the latest example.
From London to Tokyo, from Seoul to Cape Town: 2024 was a year of sharp election swings. Now you can add Washington DC to the list.
Donald Trump convincingly defeated Democrat VP Kamala Harris in the US elections, doing better than in 2020 in almost every part of the country and among almost all demographic groups. The near-universal shift toward Democrats reflects voters’ rejection of incumbent political parties around the world this year.
The US vice president’s late replacement of Biden as the Democratic candidate, and her decision to embrace his policies rather than distance themselves from them, left her effectively running as an incumbent.
In contrast, Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election allowed him to run as a “candidate for change” in this cycle and promise to disrupt the status quo.
Voter backlash
Analysts have offered many theories about why Harris lost, ranging from her gender and race, to her inability to reach young men, to her support for Israel’s war with Gaza, to her campaign focusing too much on reproductive rights and preserving democracy and not enough about immigration and the economy.
But from a global perspective, it is no surprise that she lost, given how many incumbent governments, on both the right and left, have taken a beating this year. Here are just a few:
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The British Labor Party deposed the Conservative Party (the Tories) this summer.
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France’s National Rally party won more seats in the country’s parliamentary assembly than in 2022.
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Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party gave up its parliamentary majority this fall.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lost his majority against expectations, forcing him to form a coalition government.
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The South Korean Democratic Party won a majority in the country’s parliamentary power.
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The South African party African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority.
Moreover, the US incumbent party has now lost three consecutive presidential elections for the first time in more than a century, Jim Reid, a research strategist at Deutsche Bank, said in a note this week.
Pay the price
Inflation has been a major driver of voter response. Prices of food, fuel, housing and other essentials rose during the pandemic as governments spent heavily and lockdowns disrupted global supply chains. Inflation in the US reached a forty-year high of more than 9% in early 2022 and was still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target in September.
“Trump’s victory is this year’s most powerful example of a political and economic environment that has been cruel to incumbents around the world and made clear that inflation is political kryptonite,” said Tina Fordham, an independent strategist and consultant, in a LinkedIn report. post this week.
A key consequence of inflation is that central banks have raised interest rates to curb spending, hiring and investment, cooling price growth. The Fed raised interest rates from near zero to more than 5% in less than 18 months, raising many people’s monthly payments on their credit cards, car loans and mortgages.
The central bank made its first interest rate cut in September and cut a second time this week, largely in line with peers such as the Bank of England and the European Central Bank.
Rising prices and steeper interest rates have put pressure on households in the US and many other countries. Voters appear fed up with the high cost of living and are eager to kick out the leaders they blame for their struggles.
Other issues, such as illegal immigration and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, have also led to calls for change.
Demanding change
In the US, these concerns are so powerful that they have trumped the economic reality of resilient growth, historically low unemployment, falling inflation, falling interest rates and a record stock market. In a CNN exit poll, 72% of Americans said they were dissatisfied with the country’s direction.
Louis Perron, a political consultant and author of “Beat the Incumbent: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Win Elections,” said in a note this week that elections with a sitting president “are primarily a referendum on the sitting president.”
In Harris’ case, he said, “It would probably have taken a miracle to overcome the circumstances surrounding inflation and the border.”
People “cannot pay for democracy or reproductive rights messages,” he added. “When the mood among the electorate is so sour, people just want to stop the bleeding.”
Similarly, Deutsche Bank’s Reid wrote that voters are disappointed with how slowly their lives are improving amid cooler economic growth.
He said they don’t believe the incumbents can tackle immigration, that some incumbent governments have had scandals and that voters are “much more willing to change their vote from election to election.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
