2024: The elections that will shape the world

This is the year of the ballot box. Over 50 national elections involving a potential 4 billion voters going to the polls are due to take place this year. They could leave the world looking rather different by the end of the year.

The potential of one set of elections to influence the next is endless, especially as they are taking place at a time of heightened geo-political tensions. 

United Kingdom

Of course, for us in the United Kingdom we are most focussed on our own General Election which must at least start in 2024, although it could still be running in January next year. That prospect seems unlikely. The big question is: will it be May or will it be in the autumn?

That this is the dominant political story in the UK, exposes one of the huge shortcomings of our political system – placing the power to determine the date of the General Election in the hands of the Prime Minister. The corrosive impact of the uncertainty this creates has long been recognised but the attempt to introduce fixed term, five year Parliaments did not outlast the Coalition government of 2010-15.

We have now entered a phase where every political decision, every utterance by party leaders and every policy announcement is judged in terms of its impact of the potential date of the election and its outcome. This does not make for good government, although that is something the Tories abandoned long ago amid the post-Brexit chaos of five Prime Ministers in seven years.

The choice for Sunak seems to be about choosing a date that causes the Tories the least damage in terms of lost seats, as any prospect of holding on to power finally vanished when his hapless predecessor crashed the economy in September 2022. It is also being heavily influenced by the open manoeuvring around the Tory leadership after the anticipated defeat.

The UK election might be important to us: however, it is a sideshow when it comes to world politics.

Taiwan
The first date on this roller-coaster of what could be a series of epoch shaping elections is 13 January, when Taiwan – the Republic of China – goes to the polls. There the battle between the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) is about more about tone when it comes to the all-important subject of Taiwan’s independence and its future relationship with the increasingly aggressive People’s Republic of China. Under Xi Jinping, China has made what it sees as the reunification of China a priority despite the overwhelming majority of Taiwan’s 23.5 million people rejecting the idea.

The DPP has a more forceful approach to Taiwanese independence than the KMT and a maverick third party, the Taiwan People’s Party. China’s notorious propaganda machine has flooded the country with fake news, deepfake videos and wave after wave of disinformation primarily aimed at undermining the DPP.

If there is one theme that links all these elections it is the potential of disinformation campaigns, fuelled by the lax policies of the main social media platforms, to undermine democratic processes.

Should the DPP’s candidate Lai Ching-te succeed despite China’s disruptive efforts then we can expect an escalation in tensions in the South China Sea with Communist China stepping up its military aggression towards Taiwan. The world could quickly find itself balanced on the knife-edge of a wider conflict, testing America’s policy of “strategic ambiguity” to its limits.

Russia
The one so-called election that we can be certain of the outcome is the Russian Presidential election in early March. Putin will win by a landslide majority. He has murdered, exiled or imprisoned the opposition but will still claim the election result as a rousing endorsement of his attack on Ukraine.

Ukraine
This is the election that will probably not happen. A week after Putin is carried back into the Kremlin in triumph, Ukraine was due to hold a Presidential election. All elections in Ukraine are currently suspended under the martial law imposed when Russian forces rolled across the border in February 2022.

There is nothing unusual about countries suspending elections in wartime. The UK did it twice in the last century and it is hard to see how fair and free elections can be held when Russia occupies part of the country and much of the essential infrastructure of elections has been damaged or destroyed, but Russia and its supporters will be bound to exploit this for their own propaganda. Hardliners in the US Republican Party opposed to supporting Ukraine are already making noises about the cancellation of the elections as being another reason to abandon Ukraine.

Europe
The European Parliament elections will take place in mid-June and are currently predicted to see a strong showing among far-right parties across the continent. This will probably not be enough to depose the centre-right European People’s Party grouping as the largest party in the Parliament but will tilt the balance in the Parliament in a strongly rightward direction, giving a much enlarged platform to parties with strong neo-fascist elements in their ranks.

This, in turn, will influence to complexion of the European Commission at a time when the EU faces crucial issues around enlargement and continued support for Ukraine. It will also feed through to important national elections in subsequent years, not least the next French Presidential election in 2027.

United States of America
By the time America goes to the polls in November, the impact of the elections in the first half of the year will have fed through to its highly polarised politics. This far out it is hard to predict what the impact of that might be, especially as the identity of the Presidential candidates is not certain, although most commentators still predict a re-run of the Biden v Trump contest of four years ago.

The world will be watching nervously as the Presidential election progresses as outside of Republican America and the Kremlin the prosect of a second Trump Presidency is almost unthinkable and certainly highly undesirable.

The Rest
There are plenty of other national elections due to take place next year, not least in the world’s largest democracy, India. As we have recently seen with Argentina, populations are so disillusioned with mainstream politicians that they are sometimes inclined to make bizarre and disruptive choices. Add to that volatile mix the possibility of unscheduled elections in countries like Israel and we can see why the ballot box will be so important this year.