Kamala Harris’ Defeat Is Not Just About The US. It’s Part Of A Global Pattern

Americans sent a resounding message to politicians on Wednesday when they chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris: they want change.

Vice-president Harris chose to not radically distance herself from Joe Biden’s administration over the course of her 100-day campaign and so, in a two-party system, voters flocked back to the Republicans.

This will, of course, be Trump’s second term, but he vowed to bring a major shift to the US – and his message worked.

Harris’ loss still needs to be subjected to a post-mortem, but it is clear what is happening in the US now is part of a wider trend emerging around the world where voters are choosing change – no matter who is offering it, no matter what form it might take – over continuity.

What happened to incumbent governments in 2024?

It has been the biggest year of elections in global history, meaning more people voted in a short span of time than ever before.

And a majority of them chose to punish those already in power by kicking them out.

In March 2024, Portugal’s centre left government was defeated by its centre right opponents.

Over the summer, French president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party received a beating at the polls, with gains for the far-right and far-left.

The UK kicked out the Conservatives after 14 years in power as their Labour opponents secured a landslide victory – and smaller parties on both the right, Reform, and the left, the Greens, made major advances.

In Austria, the governing coalition between the green party and the centre-right faced intense losses, and the largest party in Lithuania’s government coalition also lost seats.

Japan, too, saw the Liberal Democratic Party defeated despite being in power almost continuously since it was formed in 1955.

The US followed the same pattern when Trump won both the popular and electoral college vote – the first time a Republican has done that for 20 years.

India’s Narendra Modi was re-elected for his third term as president, but he failed to win an outright majority.

Of course, there were a handful of exceptions.

William Lai was elected to be Taiwan’s president in May, giving his DPP party an unprecedented third term – but the pro-sovereignty figure is beneficial to the anti-China movement in the island, and seen as a “troublemaker” by Beijing.

Russia, too, made a big deal of its presidential election and gave Vladimir Putin his fifth term in office. However, that contest has been written off as a sham with a rigged result.

Mexico’s progressive MORENA party not only secured another term in office but took a higher percentage of the overall votes – but that news came after 20 consecutive defeats for Latin American incumbents.

And the ParlGov global research project has concluded that – for the first time in almost 120 years of records – all of the 10 major countries it tracks which held an election in 2024 saw incumbents take a beating.

When did this trend start?

Politics professor and senior fellow of UK in a Changing Europe Rob Ford traced a pattern back to March 2022.

He looked into whether there was any incumbent around the world “who hasn’t suffered a major voter repudiation if standing for election since the post-Covid inflation surge”.

He noticed that in 2022, France, Slovenia, Australia, Sweden, Italy and Bulgaria all punished their governments at the ballot box, regardless of their political leaning.

A similar trend occurred in 2023, with Finland, Slovakia, New Zealand, Netherlands and Poland hitting out at their incumbents.

And – while countries like Malta, Denmark, Greece and Croatia seemed to buck the trend – Ford summarised that “voters have been punishing incumbents everywhere”, while “radical anti-system parties” at both ends of the political spectrum have received a boost.

That benefits anti-establishment figures like Trump, especially when they promise to deliver radical change.

Why are voters looking for so much change?

There’s a theory it comes down to inflation, as countries around the world saw prices soar after the pandemic.

When the quality of living falls, it makes sense for voters to punish the people in charge – even if external factors, such as a global virus or the Ukraine war – also had a direct impact.

This proved true even in countries where inflation had started to come down again, like in the UK. The damage from the cost of living crisis continues to sting voters.

Cabinet office minister Pat McFadden told Good Morning Britain on Thursday that he thinks Labour’s success – and Trump’s – partly comes down to asking voters: “Do you feel better off than you did four years ago?”

“This issue of how do you pay the bills every month and how you feel about your own prosperity is really important,” he added.

It’s not clear how long voters will harbour resentment towards their politicians for Covid consequences, though.

The American public already punished one government in the middle of the Covid pandemic when Trump lost in 2020.

But, right now, it seems like incumbents everywhere should be mindful that voters are not in a patient, or forgiving, mood.