2024 will be one of the richest years of polling stations open and, at least on paper, it could be a decisive year for understanding the state of democracy in the world. Voting will take place in 62 countries with a total population of four billion, just under half of the human race. United States, Great Britain, Iran, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea, Pakistan.
We will vote for presidential, legislative or administrative elections, 16 African countries will vote, 11 Asian, 22 European, 9 American, 4 in Oceania. It is also possible that early consultations, which are not currently planned, will take place. Perhaps in Israel, after the end of the Gaza war and the questionable leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. Perhaps again in Argentina if Javier Milei's radical experiment causes a social catastrophe worse than the economic crises caused by his predecessors. The annual Democracy Index of theEconomist Intelligent Unit.
Out of 71 countries considered by the Democracy Index, only 43 will have fully free and democratic elections, including the 27 states of the European Union, while the other 28 do not satisfy the basic conditions to speak of truly free and fair voting, writes the Economist . The elections will not be free in countries such as Bangladesh, where the government has launched a campaign of attack against the Nobel Prize winner for economics Mohammad Yunus, or Pakistan, righteous regimes that combine elements of democracy and authoritarianism, but above all in Russia, where an authoritarian regime exists and where Vladimir Putin's re-election is a given, and then, of course, in Iran, a country that politically and economically influences groups in conflict in the Middle East.
The renewal of the European Parliament: 400 million voting
In Europe we will vote for the renewal of the Union Parliament: a decisive test to understand how much the continental centre-right or centre-left (perhaps together) will contain the growing national-populism of the far right. The result will determine the path of the Union and influence the fate of the liberal democracies of several European countries. Between June 6th and 9th they will be 400 million Europeans called to the polls to elect the new Parliament (happens every five years). Voting is taking place in the 27 member states and several eurosceptic and far-right parties could change the structure of the new Parliament. Italy it is represented by 76 deputies elected with a proportional system, in which each national party is part of a larger political group in the European Parliament. The right has recently shifted the internal political axis in important European states, in ours but also in Finland and Sweden and more recently in the Netherlands. The difficult economic situation, tensions over migratory flows, energy policies, mechanisms and agreements to guarantee financial stability are elements of tension and electoral themes of some anti-European groups.
Elections also in 5 Italian regions
In 2024 there will also be voting for administrative elections in five Italian regions: Abruzzo, Basilicata, Piedmont, Sardinia and Umbria, while in over 3.700 municipalities there will be voting to elect the mayor and the city council. Of these municipalities, 27 are provincial capitals and six are also regional capitals: Bari, Cagliari, Campobasso, Florence, Perugia and Potenza.
Portugal to vote on March 10th
Socialist Prime Minister António Costa resigned last November after discovering he was being investigated for corruption as part of an investigation into alleged bribes linked to lithium mining in the country. He is in charge of current affairs. The Socialist Party hopes for leader Pedro Nuno Santos, the progressives and conservatives are currently tied in the polls, but there is still time. The far-right Chega (“Enough”) party represents a threat that could break into traditional bipolarism.
In Russia we vote on March 17th
President Putin has already announced his re-nomination and there are no doubts about his re-election, also considering the lack of free political initiative of competitors and information.
In every election it is the quality of democracy that is at stake, observes the Economist. Not in Vladimir Putin's Russia, where there is none of this but, on the contrary, something tragic. Centuries pass but the instruments of power always remain the same: imperial wars against neighboring peoples and freezing gulags for Russian subjects. The tsars did it, then Stalin and now Putin: repetitively, with the same repressive methods on a people who had been chloroformed for centuries, now politically accustomed to their servile condition. In a perfect world, voting should be the culmination of a long democratic process. First, an independent civil society, education system, judiciary and press should be created. Often the final result of a sudden race for the seat is corruption, autocracy, ethnic and religious clashes, the tyranny of the majority over the minority.
Polls open in India in spring
India's elections in April-May 2024 will be the largest in the world, according to Chatham House, a British political institute. More than 900 million people will vote, out of a population of 1,4 billion. There is no doubt about the third consecutive victory of Narendra Modi and the BJP, his Hindu nationalist party: consensus is around 75%. 2019 million voters and 912 parties participated in the 677 vote, 780% more than the first consultations in 1952. Given the demographic growth, the next ones will have more voters, more candidates and more parties. The question, however, is whether the largest democracy in the world will continue to be the democracy known until now. What preserved it was a very advanced Constitution for a community which, when it was approved, had 85% illiterates. According to B.R. Ambedkar, who wrote it, India was "a collection of minorities: a collection of castes, religions, ethnic groups and languages". It is the recognition of this mosaic that has kept the country united. The BJP instead wants to transform India into the country of the Hindu majority. Modi can reach the electoral percentage necessary to do so, overturning the masterpiece of the founding fathers.
In the UK we vote (probably) in May
Under current rules, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, the last date the UK can go to the polls is January 2025. If an election is not called by 17 December 2024, Parliament would automatically dissolve, as exactly five years would have passed since the last general election in 2019. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already announced that he intends to call elections, this could happen in May. The Institute for Government think tank says there are three likely windows for the vote: May 2024, autumn 2024 and January 2025. Sunak will formally ask the head of state, King Charles III, to “dissolve” Parliament.
Voting is done using the majority system. The Conservatives, in power since 2010, have consistently trailed the main opposition Labor Party for more than a year in most opinion polls. The worst cost-of-living crisis in decades and the infighting among the Conservatives that have led to the appointment of five prime ministers since the 2016 Brexit vote weigh more heavily than overwhelming enthusiasm for Labour. Recently there has been a Government reshuffle which has seen former Prime Minister David Cameron return from the past.
In Mexico we vote on June 2nd
On June 2, 2024, Mexicans will go to the polls. The country has nearly 100 million voters and they will elect a new president for a six-year term. For the first time in the history of Mexico, the two main presidential candidates are women: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, former mayor of Mexico City, and former senator Xóchitl Gálvez. Ballots across Mexico will also include votes to fill more than 20.000 public positions — a record for the country.
Belgium goes to the polls on June 9th
Election day in Belgium, we vote for the European elections and for the renewal of the Belgian Parliament on 9 June. In January, liberal Prime Minister Alexander de Croo will be the rotating president of the EU Council. Internal politics is fragmented, there are seven parties in government today. With the far-right Flemish independentists dominant in Flanders, while the socialists prevail in Wallonia and Brussels.
In the USA we vote on November 5th
But it is Tuesday 5 November that the election will take place: the American presidential elections. More than 160 million Americans are registered to vote. They will choose the 60th president of the United States, who will remain in office in the White House for four years, starting in January 2025.
Once upon a time in the USA a candidate with 91 charges in four criminal cases would have already been banned from holding public office. In the United States itself, an 81-year-old president would not have run for a second term at the end of which he would be 86: the age of a grandfather or a tyrant, said Nelson Mandela. Donald Trump's return to the presidential race in the United States is not a given. The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that the former president cannot run in the state due to his role in the attack on the Capitol in January 2021. But it is a state that would probably be "democratic" and therefore Trump could win in in any case. Unless the ruling is a precedent for other states. A Republican victory could change the geo-political attitude towards conflicts such as the Russian-Ukrainian one, but also commercial choices. In the United States it is not always the majority of Americans who elect the president. The more important "electoral vote" than the "popular vote" allows the victory of the minority (usually Republican) over the majority: in 2000 Al Gore and in 2016 Hillary Clinton won the majority of votes over George W. Bush and Donald Trump but not that of colleges state by state.
In Austria we vote in autumn
There is no date yet for the presidential elections in Austria. The far-right populist party FPÖ is at 30%. During the pandemic the FPÖ found support in the electorate by proposing itself as a champion of freedom against the closures and restrictions due to Covid19. Together with other right-wing parties, such as the German AfD, the Italian League and the French Rassemblement National, the FPÖ is part of Identity and Democracy in the European Parliament.
What will Artificial Intelligence do?
Finally, there is another danger: the improper use of Artificial Intelligence. Some bad examples have already been given. How and to what extent will the language patterns of the 2024 elections change? Asking this with some concern, the Economist nevertheless thinks “it believes that AI is not on the verge of destroying 2.500 years of human experiments with democracy”.
