Post-Covid Turmoil and Inflation Sparked the 2024 Global Movement Against Incumbent Governments Worldwide

To help understand what happened in the US presidential election, it's useful to look at global trends for comparison. One clear picture emerges: the election result reflects a global movement of opposition to incumbent governments.

The year 2024 was the biggest election year in global history, with more people voting than ever before. All over the world, voters sent a message to the party in power, left and right - regardless of ideology or history - that it was time for a change.

We saw this anti-incumbent wave in major elections around the world, including the U.K., Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and India, all countries that suffered historic defeats in 2024.

Looking at the US election result in the context of a global trend, rather than as an isolated event, helps to make sense of what just happened. It raises the question: why are people so dissatisfied with their governments at this time? Global post-pandemic inflation and soaring global prices have created a nightmare for incumbent parties around the world. Voters hate inflation, especially its impact on rising food prices.

Global anti-incumbent sentiment grows in the wake of Covid and rising inflation

Another way of thinking about the outcome of the US election is to conceptualize 2024 as the second election to follow the pandemic. Trump's victory simply reflects the dynamic set in motion in 2020. In politics, as in nature, the most powerful tsunami triggered by an earthquake is often not felt in the first wave, but in the next one.

The pandemic was a health emergency, before becoming an economic emergency. Both events were global in scope. But only the first one was seen by many as a global crisis directly caused by the pandemic. While people were aware of the deaths of millions around the world, they didn't understand as clearly why the disruption of supply chains, combined with the inevitable rise in costs, caused prices to soar worldwide.

Inflation proved as contagious as the coronavirus. Many voters didn’t directly blame their leaders for a biological scourge that felt like an act of God, but they did blame them for an economic scourge whose origin seemed all too human.

Post-covid turmoil and inflation, associated with skyrocketing global consumer prices, turned into a disaster for all incumbent parties around the globe. Britain saw a huge conservative parliamentary majority turn into its thinnest minority in the party’s nearly 200-year history. Germany’s governing coalition has collapsed amid soaring unpopularity. French President Emmanuel Macron’s party was crushed in parliamentary elections. South Korea’s opposition party dominated in a parliamentary landslide, and even in Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which had governed almost uninterrupted since 1955, lost its parliamentary majority. Even strongmen, such as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lost ground in an election that many experts predicted would be a landslide.

Therefore, it appears predictable that Kamala Harris, representing the outgoing US administration, would also lose decisively.

What led to the spike in grocery prices?

A central issue has plagued the Biden administration for most of its term: the steep rise in food prices. In 2022, when inflation was 6.5%, food prices rose by 11.8%. Although price hikes cooled off in 2023, they remained well above those experienced previously by consumers. Food prices have risen by around 20% compared to 4 years ago. Not since the early 1980s had prices soared to such levels.

The 2020 pandemic triggered a price surge driven by a combination of supply and demand pressures. Then, in early 2022, Russia's invasion of Ukraine drove up energy prices and the cost of commodities such as cereals and vegetable oils. This led to higher costs of food production and transportation. This confluence of events pushed up food prices, as companies passed on higher costs to consumers.

When asked about their personal financial stressors over the past few years, voters overwhelmingly brought up everyday purchases, above all the price of groceries and fast food, not housing or car loans.

As supply chain issues eased, grocery inflation returned to levels closer to pre-pandemic levels. However, many economists stated that we won't return to pre-Covid prices. They expect food inflation to remain close to current rates in the months ahead. Voters expecting Trump's victory to herald a return to 2019 prices or relief from the cost-of-living crisis are likely to be disappointed.

Kamala Harris couldn’t outrun inflation

“Excess” inflation - broadly defined as the cumulative growth in prices over the course of a presidential term relative to the term that preceded it - is highly predictive of electoral outcomes, says economist Robert Gordon of Northwestern University. It is a crucial part of how voters decide whether they feel better off and want to stick with the incumbent. This measure strongly presaged a Trump victory.

The optimistic scenario of the Harris campaign assumed that, after a year of moderate price growth, people would have gotten used to higher prices while enjoying the increased earning power afforded by a booming job market. Instead, anger at inflation persisted, even among tens of millions of working-class Americans who had grown wealthier. This is not a purely economic issue; it's a psychological one too. People interpret wage gains as a product of their own effort and high costs as a policy problem that the president is supposed to solve.

Final thoughts

Republicans are heading back to the White House, the Senate and Congress. They have inflation to thank.

The year 2024 has been a year of global anti-incumbency. The U.S. and many other countries appear to be going through an unusually fast-paced electoral era, one of back-and-forth swings, in which every sitting president spends most of his term with an underwater approval rating.

This alternation of mandates is inherent to democracy; it's a good thing for the governance of the country. However, if politicians want to leave their mark on history, they must take a long-term view and care about the well-being of their constituents.