At a time when the globe faces perhaps its most tumultuous geopolitical year, the results will help determine who controls and directs the world for the remainder of the twenty-first century.
At a time of two raging wars, political polarisation and escalating tensions between America and China, tomorrow is the first day of an extraordinary year for democracy. No less than 40 national elections in countries representing 41 percent of the world’s population and 42 percent of its gross domestic product will take place throughout the year. Among these countries are the wealthiest and most powerful—the United States, India and the United Kingdom; the most authoritarian—Russia and Iran; the weakest—South Sudan; and the most stressed—Taiwan and Ukraine (whose elections scheduled for 31 March have been postponed).
At a time when liberal democracy is under attack from authoritarians such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and a plethora of military coup plotters, the globe faces perhaps its most tumultuous geopolitical year in a generation and the results will help determine who controls and directs the world for the remainder of the twenty-first century.
The results of some elections are already known, even though it is several months before a single vote is cast. Just as in Egypt’s phoney election earlier this month when, having barred his only viable opponent, the president and former coup leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, won 89.6 percent of the vote securing his third term of office, so Russia’s Vladimir Putin’s fifth presidential term will be more an imperial coronation than a contest. As his critics have claimed, “‘Tsar Putin the First’ is reversing the emancipation of the serfs, carried out by ‘Tsar Alexander the Second’ nearly two centuries ago”. Since he came to power twenty four years ago, creating the gangster state that is modern Russia, any contestant who could realistically challenge Putin has either been banned, imprisoned or even murdered.
Another foregone conclusion is Iran, where most of the contenders who might present an alternative to the ruling murderously misogynistic clerics are already in jail. Many Iranians are expected to boycott the vote, as was the case in Hong Kong’s ‘patriots only’ poll this month when only 27.5 percent bothered to vote. In 2019, turnout in the former British colony had surged to a record high as voters backed pro-democracy candidates. But democracy is anathema to Xi Jinping and he imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong immediately after the election which excluded anyone deemed disloyal to Beijing from holding office.
Bangladesh is no better. Here, Prime Minister Sheik Hasina and the ruling Awami League have dominated Bangladeshi politics for the past fifteen years and are guaranteed to win elections on 7 January simply because they’ve suppressed any opposition. It’s estimated that some five million members of the opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party, almost half the total membership, have been charged with offences of one sort or another and most of the party leaders are in jail. Rather than legitimising this sham election, the BNP leadership has urged its supporters to boycott the vote.
Nevertheless, many elections in 2024 are not predetermined, and here are six of the most significant.
Taiwanese Presidential Election 13 January
Along with the US elections at the end of the year, this election is potentially one with enormous geopolitical consequences. Of the three contending parties, each led by former mayors, the betting money is on the incumbent vice president and member of the ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP), Lai Ching-te. Lai’s main opponents are Hou You-ih of the Kuomintang Party (KMT) and former mayor of New Taipei City, and Ko Wen-je, the founder of the Taiwan People’s party (TPP) and former mayor of the neighbouring city of Taipei. The dominating issue in this election is Taiwan’s ties with Beijing. All three parties reject the “one country, two systems” reunification, given its bogus outcome in Hong Kong, but advocate different approaches to China.
The KMT favours greater trade and cooperation as the basis for a peaceful relationship, although China’s recent assertiveness has undermined this approach. The DPP meanwhile is campaigning on defending democracy and building ties with the US to deter a Chinese invasion. Today, Taiwan’s disillusioned youth are frustrated with high unemployment, stagnant wages and sky-high housing costs. As a result, third party candidate Ko Wen-je could become the kingmaker, as restless young voters look for an alternative to the traditional parties.
Pakistani General Elections 8 February
Following Prime Minister Shehbaz’s dissolution of the country’s parliament last August, the Election Commission of Pakistan twice postponed new elections, now due to be held on 8 February, arguing that it needed more time to prepare for the vote. The real reason for the delay is, of course, that Pakistan has been embroiled in political turmoil for nearly two years following the ousting of a no-confidence vote of Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022. Undeterred, Khan led protests seeking to force his successor, Shehbaz Sharif from office, only to find the powerful Pakistani military cracking down on his supporters and the country’s prosecutors accusing him of taking bribes. Khan denied the charges but was quickly convicted and sentenced to three years in jail, only to find himself charged again in November with leaking state secrets.
Clearly worried about Khan’s influence in the country as elections loom, the government has banned stations from even showing his face on television screens, prompting Khan to evade the ban by using artificial intelligence to create a fiery speech mimicking his voice to share with supporters recently over the internet. With inflation running at thirty percent and having narrowly avoided a catastrophic default on its foreign debt, whoever becomes Pakistan’s next Prime Minister faces a daunting task.
Indonesian General Election 14 February
Imagine holding an election in a country of 275 million people spread across 17,000 islands, all in a single day! This is what will happen in Indonesia in six weeks’ time. The current President Joko Widodo is barred by the constitution from running a third time and there are three leading candidates to replace him. The frontrunner is a retired army lieutenant general, Prabowo Subianto, the son-in-law of former Indonesia’s dictator Suharto. Prabowo was dishonourably discharged from the army in 1998 and banned from entering the United States for two decades because of human rights violations. To improve his image for the election, Prabowo has picked outgoing Widodo’s son as his running mate, such is the state of Indonesian politics! His election fortunes will be impacted by the extent to which he can effectively legitimise himself in the eyes of voters.
Indian National Elections April-May 2024
Many around the world look at India’s national elections as a testimony to the wonders of democracy. They marvel at how a country of 1.4 billion people, speaking more than one hundred languages, uses a ballot box rather than guns or dynastic privilege to decide who will govern them. Having won elections in three Indian states in December and with polls showing that nearly eight out of ten Indians approve of Prime Minister Modi’s job performance, a number that virtually every other democratic head of state would die for, most believe that he will be a shoo-in when his Bharatiya Janata Party wins their third election in a row. Modi is viewed as an electoral superstar and with India’s economy growing at 7 percent lifting incomes across the country, the BJP’s message continues to resonate with voters. A surprise Modi defeat could have strategic ramifications, hurting US attempts to woo India as an ally and counterweight to China.
UK General Election October (but possibly May)
In the UK, prime ministers can dissolve Parliament and call elections at any time within five years after the previous election—there’s no fixed date. Most pundits are predicting an election in October, but May remains a possibility. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose grandparents were both Punjabi, is struggling to reverse a twenty-point gap in current opinion polls, with the British electorate increasingly frustrated by a faltering economy and thirteen years of Conservative rule. Over the past four years, the opposition Labour Party has moved from the far-left under its previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, to a more centrist position, mimicking Conservative policy and making them more electorally acceptable. Public sentiment, however, remains fickle as there is ambiguity on what Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, actually stands for. If the gap between the two Parties narrows as the year progresses, it’s likely that Labour could only govern in coalition with the Liberal Party, resulting in political instability.
US General Election 5 November
No election in 2024 will be more consequential than this. Not only is the White House up for grabs, but so is one-third of the seats in the Senate and all the seats in the House of Representatives. Currently, the presidential race is likely to be a re-run of 2020, with two geriatric candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, squaring off against each other. If Trump wins, and it’s a big if, he will join Grover Cleveland as the only American president to serve two non-consecutive terms. For the past two years, more than two-thirds of voters have believed that the country is heading in the wrong direction, notwithstanding a strong labour market, rising wages, easing inflation and an uptick in consumer confidence. Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in national surveys, despite facing 91 felony counts in four criminal cases in Washington, New York, Florida and Georgia. The country remains deeply divided along the demographic fault lines that formed in the 2016 election and deepened during Trump’s presidency.
Despite being a national election, the perverse nature of the Electoral College system means that a tiny portion of the country will determine the outcome. Until he is nominated as the Republican Party candidate, Trump’s challengers will continue to argue that the former president’s troubles will prevent him from winning the presidential election, while many Democrats continue to argue that Joe Biden is too old to be president in the November elections. It remains to be seen if these issues animate the relatively few key swing voters who will decide the outcome. If both candidates can maintain their dominant position within their party, the US is likely headed for the third close presidential election in a row. In any event, corporate America faces a perilous political environment both before and after the vote.
Happy New Year!
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.