2024 was a historic year in global elections — and a bad one for those in power

In this historic year of elections, the world gave its rulers a shellacking.

LONDON — In this historic year of elections, the world gave its rulers a shellacking.

Most notable for Americans, of course, was the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris to President-elect Donald Trump. But zoom out and that is just one data point in a pattern that stretches from India to Austria, Botswana to South Korea, and Britain to Uruguay.

NBC News reported at the start of 2024 how it would see more elections than any other year on record, with more than 70 nations covering 4 billion people going to the polls.

Now that all the ballots have been cast and tallied, the trend is unmistakable: In almost all the world’s industrialized countries — and in many developing countries, too — governments’ vote shares decreased.

“It has been a remarkably bad year for incumbents,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/2024-was-historic-year-global-elections-bad-one-power-rcna179086

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