Incumbent Parties had a horrible 2024
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For many years incumbent parties and sitting presidents had a head start in elections due to the "incumbent bonus". In 2024, that bonus turned into a burden that led to incumbent losses across the world.
One country where this was evident is the United States. Usually, sitting presidents enjoy an incumbent bonus when they are up for re-election. This led to every incumbent being re-elected since 1992 until Donald Trump entered the scene, but he managed to get incredibly close despite low approval ratings.
In 2024, Democrats faced a different reality. Their sitting president was widely unpopular and his replacement candidate, Kamala Harris likely lost because she was associated with the Biden administration. This wasn’t just a problem for the US-democrats. Incumbents across the world suffered heavy losses as they were all unpopular among their voters.
As the chart shows, Kamala Harris and Democrats fared relatively well in a year that was a bloodbath for incumbent parties. Among the shown elections, which includes one 2025 election in Germany, only the incumbent party in Mexico saw gains, likely due to their popular leading candidate: Claudia Sheinbaum.
The widespread heavy losses can’t just be explained by the shift towards the right the world is currently seeing, since the big incumbent losers weren’t all left-leaning parties. In the UK the conservative Tories lost to the left-leaning Labour Party and in Japan, it was the nationalist party that suffered extensive losses.
The worldwide disdain of incumbent parties, one that even extended to democratic African countries like Botswana, seems to be the result of economic frustration.
Few incumbents survived high Inflation rates in 2024
Almost all developed nations saw record inflation rates in the past years. Higher prices for common goods affect a lot of voters, even those who pay little attention to politics. High prices, together with stagnating growth in some countries like Germany, lead to voters being discontent with their government, no matter if right or left-leaning.
There are of course national issues that play into the differences in the losses per country. For example, the Tories in the UK have been blamed for botched Brexit politics and chaotic leadership, while democrats in the US profited from a weak opposing candidate, Donald Trump (Other Republicans like Nikki Haley could have won in a landslide, polls showed).
In the end, almost no incumbent party or president was able to overcome the anti-incumbent wave. What stays is the realization that voters will punish incumbents for high prices and economic stagnation, no matter if those incumbents are part of right-wing or left-wing parties. The only way to avoid such losses in times of high prices and economic struggle seems to be a combination of other issues taking the top spot and a low association with the unpopular administration.
Canada’s liberals show how it can be done
This is very evident in Canada’s upcoming election. The ruling liberals were deeply unpopular due to high prices and slow economic growth. Then, another issue rose to the top as US President Trump threatened to annex the country. At the same time, unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stepped down and did not run for re-election. This paved the way for the liberal party to nominate a candidate who was not associated with the current economic struggle, Mark Carney.
Polling shows that, because of strong responses to Trump’s threats and the nomination of a new leader, the liberal party has closed a huge gap and is now on the verge of winning the majority in the upcoming April election.