Donald Trump’s big electoral victory is part of a major global trend

President-elect Donald TrumpAmerica’s recent victory in the US presidential election is part of a broader global trend of anti-incumbency sentiment and populist appeals to voters, as nearly half the world has held elections this year.

More than 60 countries held elections in 2024. Billions of people were faced with choosing their country’s next leader, and overwhelmingly more voters than before voted for the party’s candidate not outgoing.

During the year, most ruling parties, whatever their political ideology, have systematically failed on election days, with more voters than expected supporting the opposition, non-incumbent parties and candidates.

Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election appears to be part of the anti-sentimentalist trend, said Joshua Tucker, a politics professor at New York University. News week.

Although term determination was particularly unusual in this election, since Trump previously served as the 45th president and vice president of the United States. Kamala Harris If she serves in the Biden administration, “she became the incumbent, even though that wasn’t a hundred percent clear in advance,” Tucker said.

Trump won the popular vote and the electoral college against his Democratic opponent. In the weeks leading up to the election, some forecasts gave Trump a slight lead, while most overall national polls had Harris leading in the popular vote.

“I think clearly we saw, as the exit polls demonstrated, that people who were unhappy with the direction of the country, unhappy with the economy, came out decisively against Harris.” , Tucker said.

A CNN exit poll released Tuesday evening showed that 72% of Americans who voted in the 2024 election are unhappy with the country’s current direction.

Harris received more than 68 million votes on Tuesday, more than 13 million less than the president Joe Biden received in 2020. This drop in the vote share of the outgoing party has performed several times around the world this year, with a few exceptions.

In Asia, Japanese Prime Minister The Liberal by Shigeru Ishiba Democratic Party lost its majority in parliamentary elections in late October, while in April South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party won a majority in the National Assembly.

Europe has also seen similar trends, with the opposition Labor Party defeating the UK’s ruling Conservative Party last July. In the European Parliament, far-right parties have made notable progress, and in France, Marine Le PenThe National Rally party won 50 more seats in the country’s Assembly compared to 2022.

In India, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi“Who was known as the most popular politician in the world also lost his majority at a time when people thought he would get a supermajority. Instead, he had to enter a coalition government,” Tucker said. News week. Modi has an approval rating of over 70 percent.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, in power for a decade, posted closer results in June, winning 240 of 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament.

The African national Congress This party, South Africa’s main political party since the post-apartheid elections, lost its majority for the first time in June. His support fell from 57 percent in 2019 to 40 percent of the vote this year. Last week, the Botswana Democratic Party, which had been in power for almost 60 years, lost its parliamentary majority, leading the president to concede.

In addition to anti-incumbency sentiment, Tucker noted that “there appears to be a willingness among voters to consider new and alternative options, and in particular to consider populist appeals.”

He cited recent elections in Bulgaria, Lithuania, France and Japan as illustrating the success of the far-right and, in Japan, left-wing and populist parties.

Concerning the American elections, “the Republican Party ran a populist campaign for president,” Tucker said.

However, some countries have bucked the trend, notably Mexico.

Mexico’s newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is politically aligned with the ruling Morena party and the former president. The country’s first Jewish female president received the highest percentage of votes in its history, in stark contrast to the global trend of anti-incumbent sentiment.