Incumbents Beware

American politics are argumentative, amusing, and dramatic, but that shouldn’t let us lose interest in the observable political phenomena in the rest of the world.  Over the course of this year, incumbent governments have been losing legislative seats and elections at a very high rate. Moreover, polls indicate incumbent parties are set to lose in upcoming elections, indicating this trend will continue for the foreseeable future.

If you go to the 2023 national electoral calendar on Wikipedia, you can see the results of every national election this past year. While it’s pretty easy to understand how Turkmenistan or Bhutan’s government ends up being “re-elected” (they’re dictatorships with one party elections), a wider examination of multi-party democracies shows that incumbent governments have been having a rough year. From Spain and Turkey to  smaller nations like Antigua and Montenegro, political parties in government received significantly less support this year compared to their last elections. The former president of Montenegro, for instance, won his election by 20 points in 2018. This past February, he was defeated by an 18 point landslide.

In fact, if you do what I did, just click on random elections, you’ll see this same pattern: incumbent governments are getting thrown out, or at least having their support reduced. I clicked on the results of 15 random multi-party democratic elections of which I had no clue about outcome: incumbent governments were replaced in eight of them (such as Finland, Cypress, and Guatemala), with four being re-elected with smaller margins of victory than their prior election (such as Turkey and Nigeria), and only three being re-elected with increased support, such as Andorra and Estonia.

The trend hasn’t changed, and polls show the worst is yet to come for some incumbent party leaders. In the UK, Prime Minister Sunak and his Conservative coalition are expected to be defeated in a 2024 landslide after 14 years of government. In Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberal Party trail the most right-wing conservative party, with polls showing their leader, Pierre Polievre, expected to form a majority government. In Argentina, the left-wing Peronist administration is expected to be displaced after one term in government, with the two-party system being shattered by a right-wing populist party that has led every poll since their primary elections that occurred months ago. By the time this article comes out, New Zealand will likely have thrown out the ruling Labour Party, led in the past by popular progressive Jacina Ardern before her resignation. Ecuador, the Netherlands, and Gibraltar will likely follow.

So…why? Every country is different: the British Tories suffer from attrition and scandals,  the Canadian liberals suffer from backlash from the cost of living crisis, but broadly the trend can likely be rooted in economic woes. Most of these governments were brought into power just before the outbreak of COVID-19, and voter dissatisfaction with long term economic recovery up to this point may explain the poor results for incumbents. Furthermore, many governments either are responsible for rampant COVID or unpopular lockdowns that are still fresh in the mind of voters. No longer can a government drum up and rally support as if it were war-time: instead, they have to deal with the long-term effects of actions, which may have turned off their voters who would have been more willing to rally to the polls when the pandemic first came.

The question for us Americans then becomes about whether this trend will affect us and the Biden administration next November. Certainly, Biden’s low approval ratings are in line considering how many incumbents have been struggling with weak polls. Yet, America is known for its exceptionalism, and its politics right now are certainly exceptional. America’s lack of a multiparty democracy is beneficial to incumbents, where third parties only act as alternative opposition figures that take away votes from the primary opposition. Moreover, the state of the Republican Party has no parallel to any party in opposition anywhere else, as shown by the recent House Speakership election. That type of internal partisan strife often does not spell well for parties here and abroad. It does seem like a rematch of the 2020 election would yield a close result though — not only do polls indicate a close race, but Biden as a governing leader in 2024 is less compelling to voters than an abstract, unifying Trump opposition figure compared to 2020. Therefore, the trend will likely follow with a decrease in support for Biden come Election Day, but will it be enough to unseat the Democratic Party? 

Romen Der Manuelian ‘23 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at d.romen@wustl.edu.