The Year the World Votes

2024 is the year of a rare planetary alignment. The world’s biggest democracy, which has parliamentary elections every five years, will go to the polls within months of the world’s second-biggest democracy, which has a presidential vote every four years. India and the United States join three other of the world’s six biggest democracies—Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh—in what will be the year that the greatest number of people in history vote.

Or at least that’s the plan—if voters turn out and democracy isn’t derailed.

More than 50 countries are expected to hold national elections in 2024, as our map showcases. Voters around the globe will assess the usual pocketbook issues that have always animated elections. But doesn’t 2024 feel a bit different? Isn’t there a strange sense of foreboding in the air?

In our Winter 2024 print issue, “The Year the World Votes,” we set out to explore why. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a renowned Indian public intellectual, locates the sense of global anxiety in one word: nationalism. The crisis of democracy, he writes, is in part a crisis of nationalism. Voters everywhere are expressing fears about immigration, and a growing breed of populist leaders is building a culture of us versus them. Nationalism isn’t new, of course. But it’s particularly important in 2024, Mehta argues, because it raises serious questions about democracy itself. This could be the year citizens reckon with how much they value liberalism and free speech.

Here’s one more thing to worry about: misinformation. It’s another age-old problem that this year has been supercharged by artificial intelligence. The growing use of deepfakes threatens to cause chaos in elections globally. How will countries prevent mischief-makers from spreading lies that influence an election? FP’s Rishi Iyengar spoke with experts around the world to find out.

2024 may also be the year in which technologists take measures to make social media safer for public discourse. Jan-Werner Müller, a professor at Princeton University, makes the case that contrary to conventional wisdom, “social media is not inherently populist.” Müller suggests that defenders of democracy should work hard to strengthen something very old-fashioned instead: political parties.

Oh, I almost forgot the story that will dominate news all year: a rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It matters for America, of course. But if U.S. foreign policy doesn’t change that much between governments, does it matter for the world? Absolutely, argues Leslie Vinjamuri, an academic at Chatham House. The very future of the international order is at stake, Vinjamuri writes, as American voters face a stark choice with profound implications for the future of Europe, climate change, and a rules-based system.

Around the time you read this, the electoral calendar will have started with a bang. If Taiwan elects a new president from the incumbent pro-independence party, expect trouble along the Taiwan Strait and renewed tensions between the world’s two major powers, the United States and China. Here’s one easy prediction: 2024 won’t be boring. We’re grateful to cover it with your support.

As ever,

Ravi Agrawal

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