Billed as “the year of democracy,” 2024 may ultimately be remembered as the year voters sent incumbents packing.

The largest-ever single year of elections was also the worst-ever year for those in office. Every governing party facing election in a developed country this year lost vote share – the first time this has happened since records began – according to an analysis by the Financial Times.

Incumbency advantage used to be an iron law of politics. Recently, “better the devil you know” has given way to “throw the rascals out.” Voters’ instincts have been to twist, not stick. In the United States, Kamala Harris appeared to pay a price for her unwillingness to distance herself from incumbent President Joe Biden’s policies, to Donald Trump’s gain.

What might 2025 bring for incumbents and what factors are at play?

For decades in wealthy democracies, the surest way to win office was already to hold it. Incumbents were a protected class. Power would switch hands between a small number of mainstream parties, mostly after long periods of relative stability.

In emerging, poorer democracies, things were more volatile. Mainstream parties were weaker, facing constant challenges from upstart insurgents, so power changed hands more often.

But this distinction between richer and poorer democracies has blurred. Wealthy democracies have become more volatile, said Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at the University of Oxford.

It’s the inflation, stupid

Why was 2024 so difficult for incumbents? Post-mortems have found a common cause of death: inflation.

Prices jumped in many countries after the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Driven by a range of factors, including supply disruptions and a rebound in demand, global inflation reached its highest level since the 1990s in 2022. Voters hated it. Even if most of the causes were global, the governments that presided over soaring costs ultimately paid the price.

Perhaps governments had forgotten just how much voters detest inflation. During and after the last big global shock, the 2008 financial crisis, inflation remained relatively low, despite years of huge government stimulus.

Although unemployment soared in the United States and Europe after 2008, inflation was largely stable. The economic pain was more intense for some but was less diffuse. “Inflation hurts everybody less than unemployment, but it’s so widespread,” said Ansell. As the economist Isabella Weber recalled in the New York Times: “Unemployment weakens governments. Inflation kills them.”

Perhaps lessons can be learned from Mexico, which elected Claudia Sheinbaum from the governing Morena party, a rare bright spot for incumbents in Latin America amid a long run of defeats. To stem inflation, her party introduced price controls to cap the price of basic groceries in 2022 and renewed the measure last month.

Although mainstream economists are uneasy about price controls, Weber, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, points out Western countries have already implemented a global price cap on Russian oil. In the face of overlapping crises, perhaps this taboo will crumble.

If inflation really was the culprit, this may be good news for tomorrow’s incumbents. Once prices stabilize, wages catch up and voters get used to the new cost of eggs, those in office – barring more price shocks – ought to have an easier time in the years to come. At least, that’s the theory.

Shopping around

But it’s not the only theory. The defeat or retreat of incumbents across the globe cannot be explained by materialist factors alone. Cultural, structural forces are also at play, which may be making volatility the rule, not the exception.

This erosion of partisan loyalty has opened the field to new actors who scorn the old rules of the game and chip away at its norms. Vicente Valentim, an assistant professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said this happens at both the policy level, such as the backlash against immigration and gender equality, and the procedural, such as refusing to concede an election or casting doubt on the integrity of a vote.

If supply is changing, so is demand. One explanation for rising volatility is that voters have become more like consumers: hard to satisfy, hungry for gratification, always shopping around.

Perhaps one can map changing voter habits onto changing consumer habits. Rather than going to a small selection of bricks-and-mortar stores to buy a fixed selection of goods, many in wealthy democracies have become used to being brought what they want when they want. Amazon and Netflix spoil their customers with choice; voters might expect democracies to catch up.

Having to “choose between the two stores that have always been on the street” – one left, one right – “seems quite mid-20th century in an early 21st century world that we’re used to in every other way,” said Ansell.

On the horizon

A brief survey of upcoming elections suggests 2025 may be equally hard for incumbents in democracies. After failing to hold his coalition together for a full term, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is almost certain to be ousted in February’s snap election, called after he lost a confidence vote this month.

Canadian voters are also likely to end Justin Trudeau’s near-decade-long premiership. The election must be held on or before October 20, but could be brought forward if his coalition also falls apart.

Opinion polls suggest center-left Trudeau may be replaced by the conservative firebrand Pierre Poilievre. A similar story is expected to play out in Australia, where the Labor Party’s Anthony Albanese faces a fierce challenge from the Liberals’ Peter Dutton.

In Europe, next year’s picture is somewhat skewed, as Kremlin-linked propaganda campaigns seek to boost the chances of candidates friendlier to Moscow. Despite what many in the West see as an impressive first term as president, Moldova’s Maia Sandu won reelection by the thinnest of margins in October. Whether her pro-Western party can keep its majority in parliamentary elections in May is less clear. The Kremlin has officially denied accusations by Moldova that it orchestrated and funded a widespread interference campaign this year.

Romania will also have to decide how to proceed after its top court annulled the first round of its presidential election, which it said was marred by Russian interference. A victory for far-right ultranationalist candidate Calin Georgescu – a virtual unknown before the fall – is still on the cards when a new election is held. Russia has denied interfering in the electoral process.

Things may be different in Latin America. Opinion polls indicate Daniel Noboa is better placed than most incumbents to win a second term when Ecuador votes in February, but blackouts and street violence have bolstered his main challenger, Luisa Gonzalez. And while Xiomara Castro – Honduras’ first female president – may win again in November, observers warn she is showing authoritarian tendencies.

And so, 2025 may look like a slimmed-down version of 2024, with fewer elections but incumbents continuing to struggle.

A charitable reading would say this is no bad thing. If voters are unhappy with their leaders, they should boot them out.

Adam Przeworski, a political scientist, once defined democracy as “a system in which parties lose elections.” (This won’t apply in Belarus next month, however, where Alexander Lukashenko – president since 1994 – will be confident of winning another four-year term. Votes in Belarus are widely seen as neither free nor fair.)

But interminable defeats – like Lukashenko’s interminable victories – should set alarm bells ringing. Elections send signals to governments, said Ansell. “You need to be able to punish people, but you also need to be able to reward them.”

If elections become all stick and no carrot, the process risks descending into sound and fury, to the detriment of both politicians and voters.

Kenyan President William Ruto has promised to stop abductions of government critics, in an apparent change of stance for a leader who has previously called the wave of disappearances “fake news.”

Ruto, his government officials and police have maintained for months that there were no abductions. Ruto has also demanded names of the missing from families, and told parliament that the reports were fabricated to tarnish his government’s name. At least 82 government critics have allegedly gone missing after a youth-led protest movement erupted in June against a controversial finance bill, though some have resurfaced.

Ruto’s remarks on Saturday did not acknowledge government culpability for those missing, however. The Kenyan leader also said that parents should better “take care” of their children.

“What has been said about abductions, we will stop them so Kenyan youth can live in peace, but they should have discipline and be polite so that we can build Kenya together,” Ruto said at a stadium in Homa Bay, in the west of the country.

Among the disappeared are two young men who shared AI-generated images of Ruto in a casket that some considered offensive and a popular cartoonist whose images of the president went viral. Despite Ruto’s speech, a state-funded human rights body says 29 people remain unaccounted for, including six people who disappeared days before Christmas.

Human rights defenders allege that all of the missing activists and critics are believed to have been tracked down by government intelligence who tapped into phone signals. The protests were widely mobilized online, before they spread onto the streets.

Human rights activist Bob Njagi, who said he was abducted this summer, reacted to Ruto’s comment: “It was an admission that they’re happening under their watch, if not by them.”

Njagi leads the Free Kenya Movement, which he described as a consortium of organizations united in pursuit of change for the country. He was one of the most prominent figures behind the protests against Ruto’s government before he disappeared.

Njagi said that he was driven to an undisclosed location, stripped naked and chained to the floor for the first two days of his detention. He said that Kenyan security officers held him incommunicado, handcuffed and blindfolded in solitary confinement for 30 more days but was released after a judge threatened to jail the police chief for not revealing his whereabouts.

“They’re Kenyan security officers who took us because they told me we had become a threat to the state. These men would just give us one meal a day – ugali (cornmeal) and cabbage or beans,” he said.

Until President Ruto’s comments, the Kenyan government has always denied that anyone was missing. “Social media has been used to perpetuate the narrative that certain lawful arrests were abductions when, in fact, those arrested were either awaiting trial or have been released after necessary legal procedures,” Chief Minister Musalia Mudavadi said last week.

Njagi said that he was never formally questioned, “but the guys who brought us food would ask random questions, like, ‘who’s been funding you?’ and who our associates were.”

The detention was excruciating for many reasons, he said, including that he couldn’t communicate with his family. Njagi was expecting a daughter. She was born nine days before he was released.

Njagi is now reunited with his now three-month-old daughter. But others like Gideon Kibet, a 24-year-old college student who drew the viral cartoon of Ruto, are still missing.

Kibet disappeared after meeting opposition senator Okiya Omtatah on Christmas Eve.

Kibet’s younger brother Ronny Kiplangat, who is also still missing, had disappeared a few days earlier. The brothers’ family fears that security forces used Kiplangat as bait to lure Kibet – who was studying outside the capital – to Nairobi.

Omtatah said that both Njagi and Kibet were abducted by security forces after leaving his office.

“(Kibet) boarded a matatu after my driver dropped him off in the city center. As they have done with others, they must have blocked the matatu and snatched him from it,” he said.

“If you look at the attitude of the police, they know what is happening. The state is simply allowing it or acquiescing to it,” Omtatah said.

Like many young Kenyans, Kibet was once a fervent Ruto supporter. But he turned into a sharp critic as the euphoria that propelled Ruto to power has turned into disappointment with his government over corruption, unemployment, and an anemic economy.

Kibet is among many youth that voted for Ruto’s “hustler-in-chief” promise of a better future, but have soured on his government just two years in.

Twenty-two-year-old Peter Muteti Njeru was abducted from a suburb outside Nairobi last week.

Njeru had posted an AI-generated image of Ruto in a casket on social media, but deleted it after some commenters said it could amount to treason under Kenyan law.

CCTV footage from a shop in Njeru’s apartment building showed two men ambushing him before dragging him into a car that speeds off.

“Where do you draw the line between power and dictatorship?,” Njeru’s cousin Ansity Kendi Christine said in reference to the abduction.

Christine, who says their whole family voted for Ruto, added: “It’s a shame I will carry for the rest of my life.”

Kenya’s recently impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has claimed that a rogue unit of security officers outside of the command of the police was carrying out abductions and killings in the country. Some youth who went out to protest and disappeared were later found dead.

“Your guess is as good as mine as to who is the commander of that unit,” he told reporters, demanding that it be dismantled.

Gachagua hinted that his former boss and running mate Ruto was ultimately responsible after Kenya’s police chief denied involvement in the disappearances.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the National Police Service is not involved in any abduction, and there is no police station in the country that is holding the reported abductees,” Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja said in a statement last week.

Omtatah has called on Kanja and Kenya’s chief detective to “come clean” on the abductions or quit.

Meanwhile, Ruto’s promise to stop the abductions can’t come soon enough for the families of the missing.

Retired civil servant Gerald Mwangi, whose son has been missing since Saturday, is hoping Ruto will keep his word.

Billy Mwangi, 24, disappeared from his barbershop’s doorstep the day after a now suspended X account believed to belong to him, posted a doctored photo showing Ruto’s head emerging from a casket.

Mwangi’s father hopes his son will be released after Ruto’s announcement. In the meantime, he says, he is continuing what he calls a “layman’s investigation” into his son’s disappearance.

Civil society groups and professional bodies have condemned the abductions, calling them enforced disappearances with the regional cartoonists society decrying a return to the “dark days of censorship, detention without trial, torture and murder of voices critical of the government.”

And, while a civilian-led police oversight body is investigating, many Kenyans have little faith in their independence.

“We believe in God and I believe that my son is going to be released,” Mwangi said.

A man who killed 35 people by plowing his car into a crowd at a sports center in southern China has been sentenced to death, state media reported on Friday.

Fan Weiqiu, 62, rammed his car into people exercising at the outdoor venue in the city of Zhuhai last month, in the country’s deadliest known act of violence against the public in a decade.

China has been gripped by a surge of sudden episodes of violence targeting random members of the public – including children – in recent months as economic growth stutters, unnerving a public long accustomed to low violent crime rates and ubiquitous surveillance.

Fan was sentenced at the Zhuhai Intermediate People’s Court on Friday after pleading guilty earlier in the day, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Shortly before 8 p.m. on November 11, Fan drove his car into the crowd, in a rage caused by his failed marriage and what he saw as an unfair divorce settlement, the court concluded.

As his small off-road vehicle mowed across the grounds of Zhuhai Sports Center, he hit dozens of people exercising around a track.

After the attack, officers found Fan in the car trying to injure himself with a knife and took him to hospital, police said in their previous statement.

“The court finds that defendant Fan Weiqiu’s criminal behavior was despicable; the nature of the crime particularly was brutal; the way the crime was committed was particularly cruel,” the court said, as quoted by CCTV.

The attack had the highest such death toll has seen since 2014, when a string of attacks rocked the far western region of Xinjiang.

The hit-and-run prompted Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who described the attack as “extremely vicious,” to call for severe punishment, CCTV previously reported.

Fan’s sentencing came just days after another Chinese court handed down a suspended death sentence to a man who rammed his car into crowds outside a primary school in central Hunan province injuring 30 people, including 18 students.

Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has ordered an investigation into Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a report alleged that she had harassed opponents.

“An investigation should be opened into suspicions of witness harassment and obstruction of justice regarding the findings of the Uvda show,” which aired on Israel-based Channel 12 television last week, Israel’s attorney general said in a statement on Thursday.

On Thursday, Channel 12 released an investigation alleging that Sara Netanyahu was intimidating a witness in her husband’s criminal trial.

The report also alleges that she had indirectly harassed the attorney general and the deputy state attorney.

Israel’s Justice Minister Yariv Levin criticized the attorney general’s order, describing it as “extreme selective enforcement has reared its ugly head once again.”

“While Israeli citizens expect that anyone who threatened the police commissioner or called for defiance will be summoned for questioning, the advisor [AG] and the state attorney are busy opening investigations following gossip on television,” Levin said in a post on X on Thursday.

The far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also criticized Baharav-Miara. “Someone who persecutes government ministers and their families politically cannot continue to serve as the Attorney General – it is a shame that there are still those who bury their heads in the sand and refuse to understand this,” he said in a statement.

This is a developing story and will be updated.