Part 2: My Predictions for 2024
The three big elections that will shape global politics this year
JAN 3, 2024
This is the second in a two-part series on what we learned about politics in 2023 and, now, what I think we’ll learn in 2024.
There’s certainly a lot to keep us entertained in the months ahead. We’ll see national elections in the likes of Austria, Belgium, Croatia, India, Lithuania, Mexico, Portugal, and Romania, and state elections in Germany.
And we’ll see the politics of inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, growing concerns over migration and security, and the impact of conflicts overseas continuing to work their way through political systems in the West.
But much of the attention this year, inevitably, will focus on the ‘big three’ elections in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, elections that will set the global mood for the next few years.
And for reasons I’ll come onto, I do think each of these elections will deliver some big shocks, returning us in some way to the mood music of 2016. Looking around, I see little evidence liberalism has responded to its ongoing crisis, populism is on the back foot, or voters are reconnecting with the established political parties.
On the contrary, if anything I just see the continuation if not acceleration of trends I’ve been pointing to for many years. So, given it’s the time of year for predictions, here’s what I think will happen at the big three contests this year.
As always, I’m also keen to read your predictions in the comments.
In Britain, the Conservative Party will suffer a heavy and most likely historic defeat. In the latest polls, the British Tories are languishing more than 20-points behind Labour. They do not ‘own’ a single issue in British politics. They even trail Labour on immigration and Brexit. The vast majority of voters think Britain is heading “in the wrong direction”, and say “it’s time for a change in Westminster”. Rishi Sunak’s leadership ratings have slumped and remain far weaker than Keir Starmer’s. His parliamentary party is also divided and restless. Sunak is only attracting a little over half the people who voted for Boris Johnson and the Tories in 2019. Above all, these voters want the government to prioritise stopping illegal migration but, so far, Sunak has failed to do that. And while inflation is falling, most people are not yet feeling the economic “recovery”, telling me they feel worse off than they were a year ago. The national populist Reform party is also picking up more support, averaging around 10% and taking about one in five ex-Tories while Labour’s recovery will almost certainly be helped by gains north of the border, in Scotland, something I expect will be one of the big (though currently under-appreciated) aspects of the 2024 election. The case for Scotland’s independence, in turn, will be further weakened. So, overall, as I warned in 2022, we will learn that much of the country is simply done with the Tories who look ideologically and electorally lost and destined for some time in the wilderness.
In America, Donald Trump will return to the White House. Much of the energy in the room this year will be sucked out by the 2024 presidential election in America. And if you look at the data, and put Trump’s legal issues to one side for a moment, then Trump has more than a decent chance of returning to the White House this year. In the ‘race’ for the Republican nomination, he is cruising more than 50-points ahead of his nearest rival. Nationally, in the latest polls, he leads Joe Biden by an average of 2.4 points. On average, at the state level, Trump also leads Biden in the likes of Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan—and sometimes comfortably. Trump is also still polling strongly among registered Republicans, working-class voters, suburban and rural voters, and Hispanics, among whom he is now almost tied with Joe Biden, suggesting the ‘realignment’ which helped bring him power in 2016 remains firmly in place. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Americans think the country is currently heading in the “wrong direction”, and disapproval of Biden is creeping upwards. More Americans than not now disapprove of how Biden is handling the economy, immigration, foreign policy, national security, and crime. And more than half of Americans think the national economy is “getting worse”. Clearly, there’s a long way to go but were I in Team Trump I would be feeling quietly confident about these numbers ahead of the biggest of all races in 2024. In 2016, after I predicted the vote for Brexit, I also went out on a limb and said why I think Trump would win. What I do think now? If he’s on the ballot, he will probably do it again.
And in Europe, the populist wave will reach new heights. As I wrote in early December, if you look across Europe as a whole there’s no doubt that in the wake of new public concerns over immigration, security, refugees and Islamist terror, the continent is shifting rightwards. Recent elections in the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and Italy underline this, with national populism —a movement which seeks to prioritise the culture and interests of the majority against what it argues are self-serving, hyper-liberal, and corrupt elites— reaching record support. We’ve also seen these parties, notably in France and Sweden, exerting much greater influence over the legislative agenda, pushing policies on issues like immigration and integration further rightwards. 2024, I expect, will further underline this with the latest polls ahead of crunch elections to the European Parliament in the spring pointing to big gains for populists. State elections in Germany —in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg— will further hammer home this message. Alternative for Germany is already strong in these states and is in first place in state-level polls while, nationally, it is currently polling second. A national election in Austria will also, likely, see the return of the national populist Freedom Party, which is once again polling strongly, while in Portugal this year I expect the populist Chega, which is currently polling more than twice what it polled at the last election, will also reach a new high. Much of this will pile further pressure on Europe’s out-of-touch elites to impose more restrictive policies on immigration and refugees, policies many voters already feel are long overdue. It will also remind centre-left social democrats of their ongoing ideological crisis, which is still not fully resolved. And it will further underline how the status-quo and established political parties are simply not working for a large share of voters, many of whom will use the elections this year to register their desire for a very different of politics. So, if anything, I think 2024 will see the continuation of several trends that have been building for many years and which many people in power still seem unable or unwilling to respond to. Over to you.
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