The 2024 Elections That Will Shape the Global Economy

There is a general feeling among the public that it's time for a change.

Candidate who speaks out against a kind of old political power and still pitch yourself as new.

Around the world, there could be some serious changes.

Twenty twenty three was a year of conflict and confusion. Russia and Ukraine's war pounded on in a seemingly endless stalemate, and fighting in the Middle East has rapidly escalated since Hamasa's October seventh attacks on Israel and Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza. But we finally made it to twenty twenty four, and this year, voters across the world will have a chance to share how they are feeling at the polls. There are elections in over sixty countries that account for

If you look across the globe, basically there's conflict everywhere.

Daniel Flatley is a national security reporter for Bloomberg.

All of those conflicts have some dimension that could be changed by the outcome of an election.

Voters who go to the polls this year will also be helping shape something national security experts call the global economic order. Daniel explained what that means.

Basically, you're talking about the quote unquote Western nations like the US, in Europe and a lot of the poorer countries around the world who are trying to basically get a share of this piece of the pie that is the global economy. And within that economic order, you have rivalries, right, So you have the US and Europe basically, and then

There are a lot of moving parts here, so let's start with the elections in these three countries, Russia, Venezuela and India. Together they're home to more than one and a half billion people, almost half the number of voters participating in this year's slate of elections. The influence these leaders have on regional and global concerns is first. Let's talk about Russia, where the election outcome is almost certain.

With slim chances of winning an open election, Malua is pulling out almost every lever at his disposal to rally domestic support and extend his rule. Still longtime Venesswanan observers finding highly unlikely that Maluro would allow any opponent to defeat him next year, his main rival, opposition primary winner Maria Gurna Machau is still banned from running for public office.

And then in India, Narendra Modi is all but assured a third term as Prime minister. He's seen as a crucial political partner to the US and other allies who have tended to turn a blind eye to concerns over political assassinations on form or in soil, discrimination against minority groups, and the seeming lack of fairness in the upcoming national elections. Here's Daniel again for more on this relationship.

The first state dinner that Biden hosted was Prime Minister Narendra Modi here in the US, and that was a signal basically that this partnership is important and needs to be preserved at all costs, because if you look at the world the way that national security officials here in the US look at the world, basically what they're seeing is threats from multiple vectors China, Russia, the Middle East, Iran. But they have an important partner in India.

While elections in Russia, India and Venezuela seem predetermined, the outcome of many upcoming elections across the globe remain unknown. We'll get into which other nations go to the polls and what their voters are deciding.

After the break, the US is no longer the unipolar power in the world. There's a rising China. There's other countries that are vying for a piece of the pie, and as that sort of shakes itself out, who is running these countries is going to be enormously consequential.

In some places, the status quo looks primed to change. Our colleague Alex Wickham in the UK lays out the state of play.

There years of political turmoil with the Conservatives in power since Brexit, five prime ministers in seven years. In particularly over the last few years with Boris Johnson, Liz Trust and Rissie Sunak, we have perhaps the biggest prospect of a changing government in fourteen years. The opposition Labor Party is now consistently ahead in opinion polls by around twenty points, so Keir Starmer, the Labor leader, is well on course to become the next prime minister.

And in Mexico, Maya Averbach reports.

Mexico will likely have its first female president at the end of this year. Runder the race by a huge margin is Claudia schein Bam, who comes from the current ruling party. Her competitor, Social Galvis has called attention to the current president's record on violence, a really high homicide rate, the lack of green energy policies, the importance for reforms.

Meanwhile, in West Africa, new leaders in Ghana and Senegal will face their own unique set of challenges. Yinke Ibukun lays out the stakes in Ghana.

Dana's next leader has their work cut out for them. The country is in the throes of a dead crisis and the central bank is struggling to tame inflation under an IMF program. The victor will have little physical space to respond to citizens' immediate concerns.

By contrast, Senegal is one of africa'st longest growing economies. It's slated to begin oil and gas production this year and preparing for an election that could undermine its stability. Even in places with smaller economies like these, elections can have big consequences. They can set off a kind of butterfly effect where electoral results in one country will influence policy in others. Additional oil production in Mexico or Senegal can influence US energy policy.

So you have energy producing states that are kind of fighting for relevance at this point. With a lot of these countries that have economic resources and have and are kind of up and coming, so to speak, they want to really show that they can hold sway on the world stage, that they can influence events.

Where elections are free and fair. The leaders voters choose matter a lot, not only for local economies but for the global economy as investors look to try and make sense of a changing global economic order and versus like the COVID pandemic, Climate change and regional conflicts inject chaos into an already complex world. Dan says, pay attention to the way this election season shakes out.

So whether it comes to housing policy, industrial policy, whether to bail out certain companies or not bail out other companies, how long the recovery takes, how long it lasts, or even look at the COVID nineteen pandemic, all of those things. Those decisions are ultimately made by politicians. How we get from here to there is going to involve a lot of day to day decisions that are going to be shaped by philosophies of the candidates that are.

Running, and we'll keep following these elections as they unfold, both inside the US and outside. Later this week, voters in Taiwan will decide on their president, and our Big Take Asia team will have stories in the build up