The Centre Cannot Hold: Voters Turn Left and Right as Globe Polarizes in a Lynchpin Year for Democracy

(Photo by Josh Estey via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 DEED)

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Throughout 2024, major news coverage has framed democracy as at a crossroads. This year’s elections—so we’re told—offer a litmus test on how strong and resilient global democracy is, with voters going to the polls in at least 64 countries, not all of which are free and fair. Measuring the resilience of democratic institutions will depend on each country’s political context, preventing analysts from painting with a broad stroke. But a wider phenomenon has emerged in the major elections held so far: a departure from years of the centrist norm towards left-right polarization.

Voters across the globe are turning away from centrist parties and embracing far-left and far-right politics. While centrist parties fared fine in June’s European parliamentary elections, the far right made the greatest gains by piggybacking off centre-right momentum and xenophobic rhetoric. In France’s snap elections in July, voters made an about-face between rounds of polls, first leaning towards Marine Le Pen’s far right-wing National Rally before giving the left-wing New Popular Front the most seats. Outside of Europe and the United States, this right-left battle is equally afoot, as demonstrated by the cases of Indonesia, Senegal, and Georgia. 

A Rightward Return in Indonesia

Going into 2024, coverage of Indonesia’s presidential elections focused on the sheer scale of this electoral event. With over 200,000,000 registered voters spread across the country’s 6,000 inhabited islands, the logistical success of these elections is a feat of their own. The results, however, signify a rightward turn in a country that less than three decades ago toppled its own right-wing military dictatorship, which had been in power for 31 years.

Indonesia’s new president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, is himself of military background, having risen to the heights of his military career under the notorious dictator Suharto. Widely criticized for human rights violations during the Suharto years, Subianto was banned from entering the United States until recently, when he was appointed Indonesia’s minister of defence in 2019. Subianto perhaps faces the most scrutiny for his complicity in the disappearance of pro-democracy protestors in the ‘90s.

While his legacy is a worrisome omen, Subianto saw success at the polls through an AI-driven rebrand. His appearance as a “cozy grandpa”—most notoriously through an AI-created image of his likeness—gave him a unique appeal to Indonesian youth, who proved consequential deciders of this election. While the youngest cohort of voters may be too young to remember Suharto’s brutal rule, experts warn that the return of a military man to Indonesia’s highest office lays the groundwork for democratic backsliding in Southeast Asia’s largest democracy.

Senegal: Paving a Democratic Path

In January 2024, Senegal looked to be on track for worsened democratic backsliding when incumbent president Macky Sall sought to delay the country’s March presidential elections. After ruling the country for 12 years, Sall’s attempt to postpone the elections quickly met opposition through protests in Dakar, which claimed the lives of 50 demonstrators. Following the tragedy, Sall confirmed he would not seek re-election, and set the election for March 2024, when 44-year-old Bassirou Diomaye Faye as the country’s next leader.

With a youth-driven campaign, Faye served as the clear opposition candidate, eventually bringing in 55% of the popular vote with his platform for change. A self-described “left pan-Africanist,” Faye’s arrival as president calmed worries about coups in West Africa bleeding into Senegal. On of Faye’s principal policies is his advocacy for Senegalese financial sovereignty, or the attempt to assert control over national assets and finances in the face of globalization. The new president had previously worked as a tax inspector for Senegal’s taxes and estates union. Though a recent call for snap parliamentary elections in November may jeopardize Faye’s political agenda if his party doesn’t win an outright majority of seats – his commitment to democratic renovation in Senegal remains strong.

Searching for Answers on the Post-Soviet Sphere

In a year rocked by political protest and shake-ups, Georgia’s voters faced a polarized field of candidates in this year’s parliamentary elections. The South Caucasus country made headlines earlier this year for public protests against its “foreign agent” bill. This controversial law forces NGOs in Georgia to self-identify as “foreign agents” if they report significant funding originating abroad. The country’s progressives recognize the nuances of the new law, but the right-wing, technocratic Georgian Dream party crafted it and led it through parliament. Led by billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, the party has also legislated a law pushing back against LGBTQ+ rights in recent months.

As previously reported, Georgia’s political left remained fragmented leading up to the election, which saw Georgian Dream claim victory in what might be called free-but-not-fair elections. Momentum was building around the country’s president, Salome Zourabichvil, as a left-leaning leader of the opposition, who recently called for protests against the “stolen election.” While observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe noted significant polarization in the leadup to last month’s vote, they also saw signs of promise:

“… the engagement shown on election day—from the active voter participation, robust presence of citizen and party observers, and rich diversity of voices—gives the sign of a system that is still growing and evolving, with a democratic vitality under construction.”

Commentators frame the post-Soviet country’s politics in an east-vs-west dichotomy, painting the country as teetering between Western democracy and Russian-style authoritarianism. Whether or not the political allegiances of Georgian Dream and President Salome are this cut and dry, their threats leading up to the 2024 elections echo the global turn towards polarized left-vs-right politics. In an election that could prove consequential for geopolitics and international security, the political center is nowhere to be seen, leaving the newly re-elected right-wing government with the tools to continue eroding Georgia’s young but invaluable democratic institutions.

A New Era of Polarization

In all three aforementioned countries, voters faced one common phenomenon: increased political polarization. With this comes a general dissatisfaction with centrist regimes, as was made evident in France’s snap parliamentary election results. Though the UK saw a shift with technocrat Keir Starmer‘s center-left Labour government ending thirteen years of Conservative rule, the election also saw gains for far-left and far-right parties.

If this consequential year for democracy has proven anything so far, it is that Americans do not have a monopoly on polarization. While Georgian voters faced too many barriers to rally around a “change” candidate in their October elections, Indonesia and Senegal represent clear examples of a newly charged political arena. Tracking this change globally, evidence points to a new era of dissatisfaction with the neoliberal order, and the perceived status quo of liberal 21st century politics. 

Our era of polarized politics will face new threats like climate change, disinformation and increasing authoritarianism across the globe, with horrific and unresolved conflicts erupting in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan in the last few years. While it is yet to be seen what will replace the norms of neoliberalism, 2024 marks a new chapter in global democracy defined by increasingly polarized politics. Whether this polarization will be treated as a threat or the “new normal” can only be decided in the elections of years to come.

Edited by Gustavo Villela