“I wasn’t surprised by Trump’s victory,” he told NBC News. Around the world, “governments are being turned upside down by the same problem: the cost of living.”
Similar forces were at work in Japan, where prices began to rise after decades of economic stagnation. In October, voters harshly criticized the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power almost continuously since its founding in 1955. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was only able to cling to power through a minority government.
Masamitsu Sudo, 51, a real estate worker in Aichi Prefecture, said, “Wages haven’t increased, but prices have more than tripled.” “I didn’t vote for the Liberal Democratic Party because they can never bring about change.”
Even Narendra Modi, India’s powerful prime minister, failed to win a parliamentary majority in June, with voters accusing him of failing to provide enough jobs for India’s 1.4 billion people.
Prashant Shah, 40, who runs a consultancy firm in central Indore, criticized the party’s “very pro-capitalist stance”, which prioritizes big business over jobs and inflation.
In some regions, this economic insecurity was coupled with concerns about mass immigration.
Trump supporters told Pew in September that border security was their No. 2 election priority after the economy. The president-elect has made this a key campaign message, pledging to enact mass deportation policies.
According to Smith, a conservative elder statesman who has long advocated for stricter regulations, “the Biden administration’s failures on border and immigration issues” was another factor in President Trump’s victory. “This is not unique to the US. Look at the UK.”
Across Europe, nationalist far-right parties have successfully exploited similar concerns, this time regarding people arriving from Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Africa.
French President Emmanuel Macron was defeated by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the summer parliamentary elections. In neighboring Belgium, the far-right Vlaams Beran party and the New Flemish Alliance of right-wing nationalist parties overwhelmed the ruling Liberal Coalition. And in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party, founded by former Nazis in the 1950s, won more votes than any other party.
This is a familiar cocktail. For decades, right-wing parties have risen to prominence during times of high immigration and economic downturns, according to research by experts.
This time, populists were also allowed to make political statements.
“This is a leadership crisis,” said Kelly E. Currie, a former senior State Department official. Although she has previously criticized her former boss, Trump, she agrees with the “frustration with out-of-touch and selfish elites” that has motivated some of his supporters.
Mainstream politicians have “for decades committed to a globalization model that has damaged the economic and social contracts of democratic societies,” she said. “On the other hand, elites have enjoyed extraordinary benefits.”
What is less familiar is this historical moment.
Many people are becoming increasingly unhappy, not only with the government, but also with their own lives. Global happiness has declined for the fourth year in a row, according to an annual survey by California nonprofit organization Six Seconds. The report warns of an “emotional recession characterized by a decline in well-being and an increase in burnout” after the pandemic.
This 2022 study and others show that social media algorithms foster discord and encourage harshly dichotomous opinions while encouraging people to compare their imperfect lives to the cherry-picked happiness of others. Some argue that social media is partly to blame for this.
“Social media exploits anger and emphasizes the negative over the positive,” said Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And politicians are increasingly being held to account as the pandemic has “forced governments to play a larger and more public role in people’s daily lives.”
Politicians have made mistakes and “the intensity of public opinion has made it impossible to please everyone,” she said. The leaders “were in the spotlight from the electorate, and there was far more widespread anger and distrust than support.”
“When you think about it, it’s no wonder so many of them were kicked out.”
