Here I will look at common trends among the important elections.
In 2025 there will not be that many elections but the political developments in Germany, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Argentina and Tanzania will be followed with interest.
The elections that attracted the most attention during 2024 were:
- The British election held in July, due to the Labour Party’s landslide victory over the Conservative Party.
- The French parliamentary election in June and July moved to the right of the political spectrum in the first round, but in the second round, political parties to the left consolidated and were victorious.
- In India’s national elections, held from April to June, Premier Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party lost its absolute control and was forced into a coalition government with the National Democratic Alliance.
- In the US, Donald Trump won a second non-consecutive term of four years, the first time this has happened since 1892. The Republican Party won the White House, retained its lead in the House of Representatives and won the majority in the Senate.
- Elections also took place in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Mexico. In a significant move, Claudia Sheinbaum was elected president of Mexico and a member of the left-wing Morena political party was elected to succeed outgoing president Andrés Manuel López Obrador. She will have the difficult task in 2025 of negotiating with Trump about their common border.
In Southern Africa there were elections in South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Mauritius and Namibia. Namibia’s ruling party, SWAPO, has lost significant support but prevailed in this election, with its former vice president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, being elected the country’s first woman president.
The Botswana election was held in October, with the Botswana Democratic Party losing its majority for the first time in history, ending its 58-year rule over the country. The election saw Duma Boko being elected as president, representing a coalition of parties referred to as the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC).
This was truly a landslide victory by the UDC in an election run on the single-members constituency system with a high voter turnout.
The election in Mozambique ended in chaos, with political violence in the country and on the borders with South Africa, which were closed. General elections were held on 9 October to elect the president and parliamentarians. Mozambique also elects a president directly using the two-round system, like Namibia.
The 250 members of the legislature are elected by proportional representation and on a single-member constituencies system for Mozambican citizens outside the country. Frelimo candidate Daniel Chapo was declared the winner with 71% of the vote and succeeds Filipe Nyusi.
Renamo and Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos) also fielded presidential candidates and in the chaos that followed the contested election outcome, the Podemos candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, fled the country.
The election outcome in South Africa on 29 May has been analysed in detail, but two issues need to be mentioned. There is no doubt that the outcome in South Africa, where the ANC was forced into a coalition with only 40% of the vote, influenced the election outcomes in Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia.
This reflects the integrated economy, trade, travel and social links in Southern Africa.
The second issue is the slow emergence of a working Government of National Unity that is battling policy issues and power politics.
What do the majority of elections this year have in common, especially where significant changes were recorded, and what can we learn out of 2024? The common factors seem to be the following:
- Governments paid the price for decisions taken during COVID- 19, whether it was fiscal expansion (printing money), overly restrictive limitations in trade or closing borders.
- Governments were penalised for cost-of-living challenges, whether it was from high inflation (UK and France) or price hikes due to the conflict in Ukraine or the Middle East.Affordability became a huge issue among voters: the global polycrisis of a pandemic and two major conflicts had a huge impact politically.
- Governments were also penalised for immigration policies (the US, UK and South Africa) as immigration has now become a global social challenge.
- Finally, it is clear that social media in all its forms is here to stay as in many elections in 2024, messages on social media platforms were more influential than the conventional print media, radio or television, especially among the youth.
Theo Venter is a professor of Practice in the School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy, University of Johannesburg. Email him at [email protected].
