The Year of Elections Gets Interesting
Some thoughts on the recent voting in Mexico and India.
Everyone knew at the start of 2024 that this calendar year was going to be an important one at the ballot box. Beyond the United States, important elections were going to be held in India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. These are pretty important states!
As fears of democratic backsliding mount, one theme in all the “Year of Elections” discourse was how well populist movements would do in this year’s elections. The AP literally asked “Has populism peaked?” And it is a fair question to ask — back in 2016, Donald Trump’s Electoral College victory was preceded by the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, presaging a global wave of populist sentiment.
The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World previously expressed some skepticism on whether the 2024 year of elections would produce a similar populist wave — but hey, I have been wrong plenty of times before.
This past week has produced some extremely interesting and mixed results. Let’s start with Mexico, where current president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) wanted to be succeeded by his protégée, Claudia Sheinbaum. He definitely succeeded in that goal, with Ms. Sheinbaum winning a landslide victory. The result was so convincing that it spooked Mexico’s financial markets — which ties back into the populism discussion. As the New York Times’ Simon Romero, Natalie Kitroeff, and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega explain, AMLO wants to see some populist changes to Mexico’s governing institutions:
The margin of Claudia Sheinbaum’s election as Mexico’s president was the biggest in decades, and even as the votes were still being counted on Monday, it became clear that Mexico’s leftist governing party and its allies could be in a position to reshape the country’s political landscape.
They appear on the verge of claiming large enough majorities in Congress to enact proposals to change the Constitution that have alarmed the opposition, including advancing contentious legislation that could potentially dismantle crucial checks on presidential power….
The systemic changes Mr. López Obrador has proposed would, among other things, reduce the number of legislators in Congress; eliminate many independent regulators, transferring their functions to federal agencies; and make Supreme Court justices subject to election by popular vote. He is also seeking to make electoral officials chosen by popular vote, a measure that critics warn would weaken their independence.
The opposition in Congress had thwarted those ambitions — until now.
“There seems to be a consensus of a large part of the population to say, ‘Go ahead with your project,’” said Sergio López Ayllón, a law professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who has advised institutions such as the Mexican Senate and the Supreme Court….
One unknown is how committed Ms. Sheinbaum, who will take office on Oct. 1, really is to pushing through the changes Mr. López Obrador introduced in February, and which she quickly adopted as her own. Though she has defended the proposals publicly, analysts have also said she had no choice but to wholly back Mr. López Obrador on the campaign trail.
That last paragraph is a pretty important one, because Sheinbaum’s background is decidedly non-populist. As her Wikipedia entry notes, “A scientist by profession, Sheinbaum received her Ph.D. in energy engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). As an academic, she has authored over 100 articles and two books on energy, the environment, and sustainable development. She contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” Throw in that she’s the first woman and first Jew to be elected president of Mexico and one begins to appreciate that she is not exactly the prototypical populist.
CNN’s Kathleen Magramo, Karol Suarez and Tara John provide some interesting context for what to expect from Sheinbaum:
One of Sheinbaum’s biographers, journalist Jorge Zepeda, has argued that, once in office, Sheinbaum will likely unfurl her own platform gradually: she will first act as “the faithful disciple of the leader,” before offering “glimpses” of her own program, taking care not to stoke instability in the movement’s base.
But Zepeda has also noted clear differences between the two leaders. In an article for the Spanish daily El Pais, Zepeda recalled asking Sheinbaum what sets her apart from other politicians. “I’m someone who makes decisions based on the data,” she told him.
By contrast, Zepeda claimed Obrador could sacrifice data for party loyalty. “If (a piece of) data gets in the way, another piece is chosen,” he said, whereas Sheinbaum allows herself to be guided by the science.
Again, this does not sound very populist to me! Nor, would I add, is her op-ed in the Economist about how to address Mexico’s biggest challenge — the degree of cartel-fueled violence in the country. The folks I know who know Sheinbaum confirm that while her policy preferences overlap a lot with AMLO, she is not a cookie-cutter clone of his.
The Atlantic’s David Frum is not so sanguine. He notes that the new Congress will be sworn in with a month left in AMLO’s term of office, suggesting the possibility for more populist mischief. The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World shares Frum’s concerns will be intrigued to see how Sheinbaum governs once she assumes office in October.
The other recent big election took place in India, where Nahendra Modi and his populist nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were looking to build a governing supermajority akin to AMLO’s Morena party in Mexico. Modi himself was aiming for 400 seats in India’s Lok Sabha, the 543-seat lower house of parliament. The exit polls looked promising for Modi. Good Authority’s Christopher Clary wrote, “Unless there is an historic miss by the polling firms, the only uncertainty involves the size of Modi’s margin of victory – rather than the victory itself.”
As the voting returns come in, however, there appears to be more uncertainty than anyone expected.
According to the Washington Post’s Gerry Shih, Karishma Mehrotra, and Anant Gupta, the BJP fell well, well short of their electoral aims:
Indian voters appeared to deliver an unexpected repudiation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership as early vote tallies on Tuesday showed tepid support for his Hindu nationalist party, piercing the air of invincibility around the most dominant Indian politician in decades. The votes counted so far show that the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party will likely fall short of a majority on its own and need its allies to form the government.
The party’s performance was projected to fall short of its showing in 2014, when Modi swept to power on a wave of national anger over corruption, or 2019, when he was buoyed by nationalist sentiment over a border clash with Pakistan.
Such a result would be a rare setback for an Indian politician who has never failed to secure a majority in state or national elections over a 23-year political career and cultivated an image as a popular strongman and a serial winner. Most analysts expected him to easily brush aside India’s enervated and poorly funded opposition parties, some of which had their bank accounts frozen and their leaders jailed by the government in the run-up to the election.
Yet the mood shifted dramatically as early vote counts trickled in Tuesday morning and indicated that the BJP might not single-handedly secure the 272 seats needed in the 543-member Lok Sabha lower house, as it comfortably managed in 2014 and 2019….
In the end, it was voters in the devout Hindu heartland, the BJP stronghold that propelled Modi to victory in 2014 and 2019, who appeared to be pulling back their support. The Congress and Samajwadi opposition parties were set to capture more than half of the seats in Uttar Pradesh, the same state where Modi had consecrated a grand Hindu temple with fanfare in February, early results showed.
The Economist reported, “Mr Modi’s alliance still looked headed for victory, with the BJP and its allies ahead in 290 seats, compared with the opposition’s 235. Yet the BJP itself appeared to be on course to lose more than 60 seats compared with the last election in 2019, with results mid-afternoon putting its tally at 238, down from 303 in 2019. Crucially, that means that it will rely on its alliance partners to control parliament (272 seats are needed for a majority).”
What are the implications of the BJP’s underwhelming-but-still-likely-to-govern performance? The WaPo story notes, “'His ability to set the agenda is now stymied, said Rahul Verma, a political fellow at the Center for Policy Research. ‘There will be more pressure points. Institutions might show more autonomy. There might be more criticism of the government.’ he said.” That jibes with the reporting of the Financial Times’ John Reed, Benjamin Patkin, Jyotsna Singh, and Chris Kay:
Analysts said the election result was a blow to a forceful leader who had dominated India’s political scene for the past decade. Failure to win a majority would make it more difficult for the BJP to implement economic policy and could make Modi more beholden to his smaller allies.
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, said Modi had been punished for “overreaching”.
“I don’t think it’s a total repudiation, but a certain distaste for his hubris seems to have set in,” said Mehta, adding that if the result was confirmed, it would mean a return to the “alliance politics” and negotiated government that characterised India from 1989 to 2014….
“Indian democracy is not in peril, and I don’t think the institutions were captured like the opposition was making it out to be,” said Sugata Srinivasaraju, an author and journalist
Vox’s Joshua Keating agrees: “It's far too soon to say it's the end or even the beginning of the end for Modi and the BJP, but they're facing something they haven't in quite some time: meaningful opposition and uncertainty. And the world's biggest electorate showed it's still capable of surprise and independence…. the world's largest democracy's politics look just a bit more democratic.”
As previously noted, 2016 was a year when populist sentiment seemed to go transnational, influencing on election after another across the globe. The results this week suggest that global wave will not recur in 2024.1
If the polling is any guide, the forthcoming UK elections also seem like they’re not going to be terribly good for populists either.
The year of living dangerously.