Will 2025 elections continue the incumbency backlash?

Last year was the biggest 12 months for elections in living memory, with billions of people going to the polls. However, 2025 will also be a key year, with its ballots shaping international economics and politics into the 2030s.

The Middle East is heavily involved this year. Key ballots expected in the region include a parliamentary election in Iraq, Iranian local elections and a parliamentary vote in Egypt.

Beyond the region, elections will be held across time zones and geographies, including Belarus in January, Ecuador in February, Australia on a date to be confirmed before September, Gabon and Bolivia in August, Argentina and Tanzania in October, and Honduras in November. But the most systemically important ones may be in the G7 nations of Germany in February, Canada before November and, in all likelihood, a ballot in France over the summer.

Perhaps the key question is whether 2025 will be another year in which incumbents face the wrath of the electorate.

Regardless of time and place, voters tended to disrupt the status quo in 2024, including in the US and the UK, which saw the opposition Republican and Labour parties, respectively, win power. Meanwhile, established parties in Japan, as well as India and South Africa in the BRICS club, saw their electoral mandates slashed.

While each country had its own unique issues, there were a number of common factors in what was one of the world’s biggest ever anti-incumbent backlashes. These included significant economic and political insecurity brought about by the pandemic, alongside inflation.

Regardless of time and place, voters tended to disrupt the status quo in 2024, including in the US and the UK

Andrew Hammond

In 2025, the elections to be held in G7 countries may well bring about major change. Next month, for example, Germany faces a ballot that is likely to sweep Chancellor Olaf Scholz from the nation’s top job in a potentially era-defining moment.

To be sure, Germany has faced tough times before. However, the country is today facing what may be the broadest range of economic and political stress in the post-Cold War era — and at the same time as neighboring France is facing major uncertainty too.

The far-right Alternative for Germany, the party that Elon Musk last month declared to be the only one that can “save” the country, is currently second in national polls. It last year became the first far-right party to win a statewide ballot, in Thuringia, since the Nazi era.

The political star of the Alternative for Germany is therefore rising, even though it will probably not be part of the next German government. This is because other key parties have said, at least to date, that they will not be part of any coalition with it.

The party’s growing success underlines the fracturing of the nation’s polity. This has seen the breakdown of the traditional duopoly of power of Scholz’s left-of-center Social Democrats and the right-of-center Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, formerly led by Angela Merkel, which have been the twin pillars of German politics since 1945.

While there is a clear desire for change, the timing of February’s election may prove suboptimal for the German national interest. Although it looks likely that the CDU/CSU bloc, led by former corporate lawyer Friedrich Merz, will win the most votes, it will probably need one or two coalition partners. This may mean it could be months before any final coalition deal is agreed. In the process, the party’s reform program will be diluted.

Germany could therefore have a weak caretaker government led by Scholz for months after the election. During this time, it will face key international challenges, from the future of the Ukraine war to responding to potential economic tariffs from Donald Trump’s second US administration.

While there is a clear desire for change, the timing of February’s election may prove suboptimal for the German national interest

Andrew Hammond

In France, meanwhile, there is a growing possibility of new legislative elections in the summer. Last month, the fourth prime minister to take office in 2024, Francois Bayrou, officially announced a new government amid growing questions about whether President Emmanuel Macron will see out his final term of office to 2027.

The primary cause of France’s 2024 turmoil stemmed from Macron’s huge, failed gamble in June, when he dissolved parliament much earlier than needed. He calculated that voters would back his centrist coalition.

However, last summer’s vote saw the lower chamber fragment three ways, between the leftist New Popular Front coalition, centrists and the populist right of National Rally. There is still no clear-cut pathway out of this polarized legislature, so it is possible that Bayrou’s prime ministership may not last beyond June, which is the earliest time that Macron can call a fresh ballot.

Canada is also experiencing political change in 2025, after almost a decade of the Liberal Party rule of Justin Trudeau, who resigned as prime minister on Monday. Trudeau, a long-standing centrist ally of Macron, has become very unpopular.

With national elections required before November, several polls have put the Liberals more than 20 percentage points behind the Conservatives. So, Trudeau’s replacement as Liberal leader and prime minister will have their work cut out to stop Conservative Pierre Poilievre taking the top job later this year.

Amid the political and economic uncertainty 2025 will bring, the outcome of these high-profile G7 ballots is still not clear, despite the anti-incumbency trend. However, whatever their exact outcome, what is certain is that they will not just shape domestic politics and international relations, but also the wider global landscape in the decade ahead.

• Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.