Nobody likes an incumbent government in 2024 - even those who vote for them!
Nobody likes an incumbent government in 2024 - even those who vote for them!
2024 has seen many elections, and just as many incumbent parties massively weakened. As we check out newly elected governments, we note that people don't like the new guys any better than the old.
Throughout the year we have been running pieces on 2024's year of elections. A common theme across them all has been a popular rejection of incumbency. Running as the opposition has been a charmed experience. Everybody wants the opposition party in power but once it gets there nobody has any expectations it'll be any better.
Opposition parties who are replacing incumbents in the West's leading governments are discovering a successful election is their last popular political success. The honeymoon is shorter then ever, in fact the honeymoon is non-existent. It turns out once the opposition succeeds against the incumbent it just becomes the new incumbent. No lovely few weeks on a tropical island. No honeymoon suite. No exotic locales. Not even a newlywed pina colada.
The Year of Elections Part Deux: Navel Gazing Incumbents Lose Everywhere.
We don't have to look to far to see the truth of the matter. Here in The Letts Journal's own home country, the United Kingdom, it's plain to see. Just 2 months from their historic victory on the 4th of July (that's right we're taking the day back from those rowdy Yanks), the Labour party have been busy making themselves just as unpopular as the Tories were a mere 2 months ago.
Labour got off to a grand start by recalling the much loved Osborne playbook. There was Rachel Reeves decrying an unmasked budget hole. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, found the real cost of the Tory obsession with small boats and then as soon as Parliament reopened Labour pushed through two bills which saw not just opposition from the right-wing parties in the house, but from the left side within their own party. Opposition turned incumbent. The party of an election landslide victory seems to be racing to ruling party tyrant.
Kier Starmer began his reign as PM by reassuring the British public that everything is fine and we're gonna start building for the future. Then, before his knees could hit the bottom of the desk in No.10 Downing Street he announced that we're screwed and welcome to Austerity 2.0. Interesting tack...
While Starmer might have thought his hard truths would solidify his electoral coalition, interestingly, they managed to do the opposite. British voters have already shifted their position on the Labour government. Labour's polling average, 45% in the days before the election campaign began, tumbled to 35% in the general election. Shockingly, the Tory incumbents were so in the hole that that was still good enough to secure a landslide victory. However since the July election, Labour's polling average has tumbled a further 2 points below where they stood during the election and 7 points lower since July 3rd.
In fact, the latest poll shows the now incumbent Labour Party has only a 30% share of voters approval. It's a drop off matched only by the drop in the popularity of the new leader. Kier Starmer began the day after the election with a favourability rating of +44. Today it stands at +1. Starmer is just one point away from a negative approval rating and consider this measure was taken prior to Labour passing the massively unpopular bill to means test pensioners' winter fuel support.
To put that in context, Joe Biden took 9 months in office and a disastrous military withdrawal to reach a negative approval rating - Starmer is on track to pull it off in 75 days. Oh and Biden's started at less than half of Kier's favorability rating - I guess not everything is bigger in America.
Speaking of Joe Biden's unpopularity - the US also experienced rapid incumbency disapproval. In a remarkable version of hating the incumbent, the United States so disliked running an 82 year old moderate that polling convinced his fellow party leadership to dump him. And Kamala Harris in just the month and a half of her running, has managed to coalesce the democratic vote for her and just as quickly see the progress she made as the fresh new face stagnate. It seems lettuce wilts faster these days. Political shrinkflation?
Discussing the Biden-Harris swap in these terms may be complicated, but given that 2024 was shaping up to be a re-run of the 2020 election, just with older, less coherent candidates who both had the stink of incumbency about them it is worthwhile to consider. After all, according to Trump, he won 2020, so I guess he was the incumbent as well. Both men are incredibly unpopular. The desperation of Americans for anyone else was highlighted by how swiftly they coalesced around Kamala Harris' refreshing campaign. She overturned the Trump national lead of around 3 points in the polling average to a near 4 point lead of her own.
Unfortunately for Ms. Harris, the fresh new campaign had suddenly turned a bit stale. Rather than embrace a rejection of the incumbency and the baggage attached, she's decided to keep the 13 point unfavourable skeleton in the closet. The first day of the DNC served as a celebration of the Biden administration and culminated in a triumphant speech by Joe, himself. Then she began campaigning with the man, attaching his negative opinion rating to her remarkably positive one.
Its led to 2 weeks of Harris' flat-lining and backsliding in the polls. She's dropped below 3 points nationally. She's lost the opportunity of a Trump conviction to effectively stitch up the general. Last night's debate was the last inflection point where she might differentiate herself and make a positive impression on the remaining undecided American public.
We'll still need to see what it will do to the race, but the immediate response does seem promising for Harris. If your name were Donald you may be shocked to learn that slightly odd, somewhat antiquated immigration fear mongering about eating dogs doesn't play so well these days. Neither does getting triggered into doubling down on calls to murder the Central Park 5 in 2024.
In the end this is all just the art of prediction. Even worse it relies on polling: both boring and the last decade or so, seeming increasingly inaccurate with little correlation to election results. So let's turn to another Western nation with a major shift in its governing situation. In France, 2 months on from Macron's shocking pop election, the far right were rejected rather than vindicated and the new French government have spent the majority of that time... not working. Plus ca change! But now, finally, they selected a Prime Minister and are ready to begin working. So they've gone all in - arguing, rioting and exclaiming extreme disappointment. Plus ca change again!
Why disappointed? Well, after a win by the left (who were the largest bloc in July's parliamentary elections), French President Emmanuel Macron has selected... a right-wing MP as the new Prime Minister. Michel Barnier, famous in the UK for being that guy sat across from David Cameron, I mean Theresa May, Boris Johnson (anyone else?) during Brexit negotiations, is apparently the man for the job.
In France Barnier spent the last two years transforming the former powerhouse Republican party, the main party of the centre right, into the French equivalent of the Conservatives. The French republicans are increasingly far-right and worryingly accommodating of ever more far-right parties arising beside them. So, maybe not the best way to kick off a new centre-left government.
Understandably, French leftists who worked alongside Macron's centrists to prevent the elevation of the far-right in France, are fairly peeved. Macron has now selected a man for Prime Minister who could only, maybe, win the election with the implicit support of Marine Le Pen's National Rally. Yet, Macron reassures that Le Pen won't be in government even if it appears she will have effective responsibility for its functions. Macron is playing a game of 3D chess. Because, of course, it would have been a step too far to select a uniting figure on the Left. You know, the bloc that won 60 more seats and 8% more of the vote than the group he decided ought play kingmaker.
Macron has worked out that incumbency is a poison chalice. When you win an election the best way to avoid picking up its stink is to just not take power. Own the process to keep the power never mind who got more votes..... Perhaps a less than pleasant new outlook for Western Democracy.
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