2024 elections around the world

By Benedict Lam

Picture courtesy of Max Butterworth / NBC News

As 2024 begins, a new year of elections arrives. Although election systems worldwide are vastly different, their purpose is the same: allowing the citizens to vote for representatives they believe best represent their interests. Let’s look at the situation in the United States first.

In the US, two main parties are involved: the Democrats and the Republicans. To understand why people vote for them and the future of the US, we need to understand the differences between the two parties. The Democrats are on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum. This means their core values are based on community and social responsibility, but many Democrats believe in restricting certain civil rights for the greater good of society. Meanwhile, the Republicans are on the right-leaning side of the political spectrum. Their core beliefs are centred around maximising individual rights and justice. Many Republicans also believe that the military is an essential part of society, which is a conservative belief that has come into controversy in recent years. According to the NYT, the people seeking the democrat nomination for this year’s election include Joseph R. Biden, Marianne Williamson, and Dean Phillips. The nominees seeking the Republican nomination include Donald J. Trump, Nikki Haley and Ryan Binkley.

Even though the two parties are big and very influential, many pundits believe that the Democrats have a higher chance of winning the presidential election in 2024. According to 538, since 1972, the Democrat’s share of the popular vote has been steadily increasing. This shows that the Democrat nominee, Joe Biden, has a higher chance of becoming president. On the other side, however, Joe Biden, the incumbent and Democrat nominee, is the oldest president ever. As a result, many citizens have questioned his cognitive ability — although he is favoured, this presidential race is ultimately very competitive.

Moving to Russia, a presidential election will be held on March 17th, 2024. According to ABC News, there will be four candidates contesting the election: Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, Leonid Slutsky of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Vladislav Davankov of the New People Party and Vladimir Putin, the incumbent, who is running as an independent. Many sources and pundits predict that Putin will most likely be victorious due to his longtime status as president and because Russians trust in Putin — per CNBC, 78.5% of Russian people believe in Putin. However, many also believe that the Russian election is not free nor fair due to Putin’s autocratic government.

In Taiwan, the recently concluded presidential election was held on the 13th of January, 2024. Per The Economist, Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominee, won the election with 40.1% of the vote. The other candidates were Hou Yu-ih, the Kuomintang(KMT) nominee, and Ko Wen-je, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) nominee. Many pundits were not surprised at the result, as most Taiwanese people are against a potential reunion with China. The KMT favours reunification with China, whilst the DPP opposes reunification. As a result, it was not unexpected that the DPP won the election.

To summarise everything above, a president and their representative party can show what type of ideology the citizens would like. It can also be a bellwether for the future of a country. But one thing we can be sure of is that citizens in any country with presidential elections must want a democratic political system to rule over them.