Uncertainty is the winner and incumbents the losers so far in a year of high-stakes global elections

autotldr Bot , 9 hours ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

---

LONDON (AP) — Discontented, economically squeezed voters have turned against sitting governments on both right and left during many of the dozens of elections held this year, as global power blocs shift and political certainties crumble.

The world is already anxiously turning to November’s presidential election in the U.S., where an acrimonious campaign was dealt a shocking blow by an assassination attempt against Republican nominee and former president, Donald Trump.

Inflation and unemployment are rising in India, the world’s largest democracy, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party unexpectedly lost its parliamentary majority after a decade of dominance.

In South Africa, sky-high rates of unemployment and inequality helped drive a dramatic loss of support for the African National Congress, which had governed ever since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.

As in so many countries, Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a jaded electorate that wants lower prices and better public services — but is deeply skeptical of politicians’ ability to deliver change.

Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi, Mariana Martinez in Mexico City, Monika Pronczuk in Dakar, Senegal, Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, and Stephen McGrath in Brasov, Romania, contributed.

---

The original article contains 1,268 words, the summary contains 217 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

xmunk , 8 hours ago

The reason for this.

We all fucking hate neoliberalism… some countries like Spain voted in actual left wing governments but in a lot of cases the people who have been ground into dust by corporations have no where to turn but authoritarian shit-heels… and they’re turning to them because clearly neoliberalism isn’t fucking working.

Our wages have been stagnated by rent seekers while prices continue to soar.

tal , 8 hours ago

Actually, I think that for the US general election, there is remarkably little uncertainty in some important aspects.

I mean, yeah, the whole “maybe Biden will step down thing” means that we have potentially an unusually short campaign season and an unknown replacement (though with some pretty good guesses as to who it might be). And Trump being assassinated obviously would have had an impact.

But we also have a an unusual situation in that we presently have two candidates who have both spent four years serving as President running against each other. That is, these guys are pretty much known factors. We know how they act, what they do, when they’re in office, because we’ve watched them actually do it.

Usually at least one of the candidates hasn’t been President before.