It's the biggest election year in modern history. Will democracy prevail?
Elections are happening all over the world. Aurelien Morissard/ Pool via AP; Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images; Dan Kitwood/Getty Images hide caption
Elections are happening all over the world.
Aurelien Morissard/ Pool via AP; Rajesh Jantilal/AFP via Getty Images; Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesMore than 60 countries around the world are holding national elections. From India to El Salvador, countries accounting for more than half the world's population are voting this year.
Halfway through the biggest election year in modern history, we've already seen some dramatic changes. To name just a few:
- India re-elected Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist party for a third term, but not by the landslide many were anticipating. After a decade in power, Modi's critics are getting louder.
- South Africa's African National Congress party, the party of Nelson Mandela, lost its majority for the first time since apartheid ended in 1994.
- This week, the far-right in France won the first round of snap elections.
- In the U.K., polling predicts voters are ready to break 14 years of conservative rule by electing a liberal Prime Minister on July 4.
This year's historic wave of elections comes at a time when widespread disinformation and AI are stoking fears of democratic backsliding.
NPR has been watching several elections around the globe, and All Things Considered host Ari Shaprio dove into the upcoming elections in three countries – Venezuela, Ghana and Georgia – for a preview of what the rest of the year holds.
Incumbents are losing
One trend we're seeing in elections around the world is that incumbents aren't doing great.
"By and large, people are unhappy with their governments, much more unhappy with their governments than they were 10 or 20, 30, 40 years ago," says Harvard University professor of government Steve Levitsky.
"So, with some exceptions, being an incumbent is increasingly a disadvantage."
Taraciuk Broner is a human rights and legal expert in Latin America. She says that trends hold for the region:
"What we see is people wanting to find responses by the governments to their basic needs, and they don't care who provides those responses as long as governments deliver."
In Venezuela, where an election will be held later this month, autocratic president Nicolas Maduro is losing even his most core base of supporters, Broner says.
"Venezuela is already a dictatorship. And the question now is, will this election provide an opportunity to bring the country back to the path to a transition to democracy?"
Voters are motivated by the economy
Economic issues are top of mind for many voters.
Ghana holds a highly anticipated election December 7, which international development researcher Marie-Noelle Nwokolo says could have wider implications for West Africa.
"I think this election is crucial because it will set the direction for Ghana's political and economic future, including resuscitating an economy which has experienced one of the worst economic crises since the 1980s."
She says in the wake of nearby coups, Ghana has been "that one country with a stable democracy that people have looked up to on the continent and in the region."
The majority of Ghana is under 35 years old, Nwokolo says, which means they've been "gaslit [by the government] most of their lives," and she fears neither the incumbent government nor the opposition will deliver on their economic promises.
Similarly, voters in Georgia, who expect to head to the polls in October, are most concerned with "bread-and-butter" issues, says Tamara Sartania, an independent election watcher in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Sartania says many are frustrated with the current government, but the opposition doesn't have much support either.
"Throughout these years, [the incumbent government has] managed to consolidate power at almost every single level of governance. And the only sort of pockets of independent organizations are civil society and media. So if the government gets rid of those, there is nothing left of democracy," she says.
"That's why these elections are very crucial because basically, it's a referendum between — will Georgia continue to develop as a democratic country, or will we slide back to a Soviet-style dictatorship?"
This episode was produced by Karen Zamora and Jordan-Marie Smith, with reporting by NPR’s global democracy correspondent Frank Langfitt. It was edited by Jeanette Wood and Patrick Jarenwattananon. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.