With more than 60 countries heading to the polls, 2024 was perhaps the greatest global test of democracy in modern history. It is a year in which we have seen incumbents unceremoniously dethroned left, right and centre; elections botched by the usual suspects; public uproars and martial laws; and both the conviction and election of the most powerful man in the world, President-Elect Donald Trump.
As 2024 draws to a close, Atticus Partners looks back at a remarkable year at the polls and where the dozens of elections leave the status of democracy in the world moving into 2025.
The year of elections commenced in Taipei: a battle for Taiwan between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) – aligned with the West – and the Kuomintang (KMT) – the preferred choice for Beijing. Although the DPP took the Presidential election, it lost its majority in the Taiwanese legislature where the KMT emerged as the largest party. Regardless of outcome, many Taiwanese voters felt they were choosing the lesser of two evils: a DPP victory stoked tensions with Beijing and brought Taiwan closer to conflict; but a KMT victory would likely have brought Taiwan further under China’s sphere of influence.
This notion of elections functioning but no one feeling like winners was prevalent elsewhere in the world. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen successfully secured a second term after her centre-right bloc, the European People’s Party (EPP), held its ground amid the threat of a far-right wave that never fully formed. Her celebrations were however cut short by a gruelling process to get her ideal EU Commissioners approved by Parliament – a process that continues to this day.
Meanwhile, centrist parties outside the EPP have had their positions eroded both in the EU Parliament and on the domestic front. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, for example, saw his Social Democratic Party (SDP) lose the federal election of Thuringia to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) that was declared to be suspected of extremism by a German court the very same year. This follows months of economic stagnation in Germany and record-low popularity ratings for Scholz, culminating in the collapse of the governing coalition. There will be a snap election in February 2025, so the series of pivotal elections will continue beyond the new year.
It's a mess in neighbouring France too, where each political faction is simultaneously the power broker and the powerless. A crushing defeat in the EU elections for President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble movement – primarily at the hands of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party – prompted him to trigger a shock legislative election. Macron’s gamble was that the French public voted far-right or far-left as a protest vote, but when they were given the choice to put the extreme fringes of French politics into government, their bluff would be called and they would resort back to centrist parties.
Macron was half successful and the National Rally’s momentum fell flat in the final round of election. However, the election has left French politics in a deadlock as the centrist bloc, short of the necessary seats but refusing to enter coalition with the far-left or far-right, is unable to govern. Two prime ministers have already resigned and Macron’s latest pick for the job, François Bayrou, is unlikely to have any better luck. Macron’s Presidential term ends in 2027 and, with the shaky status quo in the National Assembly unlikely to last that long, what lies beyond for France is growing evermore uncertain.
Collapsed coalitions and far-right surges have been seen in Croatia, Austria and elsewhere across Europe. Although this was primarily fuelled by persistent cost-of-living and illegal migration challenges, alongside deep distrust in the political establishment, there are also allegations of external interference. Romania cancelled the second round of its Presidential elections after courts declared foul play from a pro-Russia, far right candidate who won the first round. Similarly, protests that have consumed Georgia for the past year intensified after the incumbent Georgia Dream party claimed victory in a hotly contested election. Protestors believe Georgia Dream is implementing increasingly authoritarian and pro-Kremlin policies, eroding individual freedoms and Georgia’s sovereignty.
Uproar wasn’t just limited to Europe. After a relatively smooth parliamentary election in April, last month South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol bizarrely declared martial law after accusing opposition parties of taking hostage of the parliamentary process. The moved failed, martial law was lifted hours later and President Yoon narrowly survived an impeachment vote earlier this month. His Democratic Party (DP), which was hoisted out of power in the April election, is now in an incredibly vulnerable position.
In South Asia, allegations of election fraud sparked mass protests in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, with the latter forcing the abrupt end of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule of Bangladesh. In India – the home of the biggest demonstration of democracy in the world by number of voters – Prime Minister Narendra Modi was predicted an easy path to victory due to a dearth of viable opponents. Although Modi did indeed win the election, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its parliamentary majority in perhaps the first crack in Modi’s decade-long reign over India.
Another surprise was seen in Iran, which held presidential elections after the previous President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash just a few weeks prior. His elected successor, reformist Masoud Pezehskian, gave many in Iran hopes of political and democratic reform – but presidents in Iran are mostly figureheads and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, retains the final say.
The result was more predictable in Moscow, where Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoyed a landslide victory with more than 87% of the vote in a supposedly free and fair election. Just weeks prior, his most universally recognised opponent, Alexei Navalny, was declared dead at a Siberian corrective colony – something many in the international community believe was a political assassination carried out on Putin’s orders. Those left standing were widely regarded as token opponents who posed no real threat to Putin’s rule and supported almost all of his policies, including the war in Ukraine.
For incumbents who didn’t have the protections of dictatorship and autocracy, elections were far more brutal. Like in India, the long-time dominant parties in Japan and South Africa both lost their parliamentary majorities. Here in the UK, the Conservative Party that has led since 2010 suffered its worst recorded defeat in its centuries of history. The result is widely seen as a rejection of Conservative rule – which has overseen years of austerity, Brexit, the pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis – rather than a vote for Labour. Already, the new Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffers record-low approval ratings although his enormous majority in the House of Commons should carry him through at least to the next election scheduled in 2029.
There were only a few exceptions to the anti-incumbency trend. Irish voters opted to keep their centrist coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, although the two swapped positions as the dominant partner and the future of the current Taioseach Simon Harris remains uncertain. Meanwhile, Mexico elected its first ever female President in the form of Claudia Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum styled herself as a continuity candidate for her extremely popular predecessor, President López Obrador, and has pledged to build on his welfare programmes.
Bar these outliers, incumbents across the world – particularly those in charge during the pandemic – by and large have been dethroned and punished by the public for overseeing a period of economic and political uncertainty. Nowhere was this more critical than the United States, where both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris tried and failed to prevent the return of President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump’s year – shrouded by deep political divide; inflamed rhetoric; criminal trials and scandals; and multiple assassination attempts – epitomises the volatility of democracy in the modern era. But even in the face of these threats, and of the fears from many of what Trump’s presidency may bring to American and global politics, the electoral process in the US ran surprisingly smoothly and President Biden has restored the norm of conceding and committing to a peaceful transition.
Indeed, although there were certainly cases of foul play and rigged results by the usual suspects (and perhaps by some unusual), democracy has emerged from the political rubble impressively intact. For it is the role of democracy to empower voters to ensure their voices are heard and it is clear from the fall of the sitting political establishment that those voters wanted – above all else and for better or worse – change.