2024 will be an exceptional year in electoral terms. Almost half of the world's population, 3.6 billion people, will vote. With high-voltage appointments such as those in the United States, the European Parliament or India.
Elections are one of the pillars of democracy. They reflect competition for power between parties that accept the legitimacy of defeat. They are, according to political scientists, a "civilized civil war" in which the use of force is not allowed. Elections are synonymous with democratic health. However, never before have they given us so many surprises and caused so much discomfort.
The recent victories of Javier Milei in Argentina and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands are eloquent examples. They have brought to the top characters with extremist positions in a political scenario that for decades has revolved around the center or controlled alternation. They win for various reasons. Due to the mistrust of important sectors of the population towards the classic parties. To understand that the elites do not meet their economic expectations. Or because they feel threatened by the increase in immigration. The political landscape, in short, has become chaotic and unpredictable.
2024 will be a year of those who do not let sleep. Almost half of the world's population will participate in elections. This will affect 3.65 billion people (only 2 billion are eligible or able to vote) in more than 70 countries equivalent to 40% of world production. These are data from the Mirabaud studies service, which is directed by John Plassard. Investment banking analysts act as radars for global capitalism. They catch the trends in motion and move the markets.
When the economy is stable, analysts scrutinize the world in watertight compartments. Macroeconomics, politics, finance, war, social change, energy, diseases... Since the pandemic, the world is more unstable and economists must delve into these compartments and relate them to have a systemic view of what is happening.
Plassard announces that 2024 will be a historic year. In periods of instability, elections create more uncertainty. And these take place in societies that are very divided and afraid of geopolitical tensions.
The results with the greatest capacity to change the course of history are those of the United States. They are held in November, but the roar of the battle will begin to be felt next January, with the primary elections. The candidates will be announced on March 12.
Donald Trump leaves as the winner. He was the one who started the wave of political confusion in 2016. He may also be the one who acts as the midwife of this new world. The second Trump would arrive at the White House better prepared and more determined to complete the changes he left half-baked. All of them affect hot areas of the planet: Ukraine, Israel and China. Joe Biden has implemented the right reforms and the economy has performed better than expected. But, for now, this has not allowed the Democrat to take off in the polls.
The second focus of attention will be the elections to the European Parliament (June 6 to 9). Not so much for its effects in an institution with relative power, as for the psychological impact that a (likely) far-right victory would have in an institution structured around moderate parties. The results will be read in a very particular way in each country, with public opinions that are already very polarized.
There will be general elections in Uruguay and presidential elections in Venezuela (October 27) and Mexico (June 2), where López Obrador (impossibility for a fourth term) wants to guarantee the continuity of his policy. There will be regional elections in Australia, which may reinforce the anti-indigenous bias of the referendum on the Constitution. There will be high-voltage elections in India, the country that the US wants as a counterweight to China. Elections also in South Korea and Indonesia, another emerging economic giant. In South Africa, a key country in the Global South, the African National Congress is facing the loss of power for the first time since the apartheid years.
Russia will go to presidential elections on March 17. But everything points to Vladimir Putin renewing his post. Liberal democracy entails free and fair elections. It is difficult for those to be held in Moscow to conform to this pattern.
In Europe, there will be parliamentary elections in Austria, federal elections in Belgium (June 9), presidential elections in Finland (January 28), regional elections in three German states (September), general elections in Romania and federal elections in Switzerland. The Portuguese are summoned to the polls on March 10, the result of an unusual and undiscreet intervention of the judicial system in politics. In the UK, according to tradition, elections should be held in the autumn. It will be a unique opportunity for Labor to return to Downing Street, a place they have not set foot in since 2010. In the other countries mentioned, on the other hand, the right and the extreme right all have the numbers to advance.
The underlying trend in rich democracies is the advance of the extreme right. The intensity of this advance is leaving observers out of the game. It is true that it denotes the existence of a deep-rooted environmental white racism. But it is also true that the term "extreme right" has become useless to explain all this unrest that fuels the tsunami. The economist Tyler Cowen proposes the term "deep center". What is happening would no longer be an unforeseen accident on the periphery, but a change in the very nature of the system. A change that someone will have to know how to diagnose in order to overcome these very dark times that we have to live through.
