Incumbent parties win big or they don’t win at all

Latin American presidents will now follow the advice of the bad coach in the Mighty Ducks movie: "It's not worth winning if you can't win big."

With only four exceptions, in every democratic presidential election in Latin America since 2018, the incumbent party has lost. What is notable about those four exceptions - Paraguay in 2023 and El Salvador, Dominican Republic, and Mexico this year - is that the incumbent party dominated those elections. The region has not seen an incumbent party win the presidency in a close race (<10 point gap) since late 2017 in Ecuador when Lenin Moreno won and early 2018 when the Colorado Party, a nearly permanent exception in the region, held on to power in Paraguay.

When we look back a few years from now, the strong incumbent party victories led by Peña, Bukele, Abinader, and Sheinbaum will be the outliers in an anti-incumbent moment that will last at least another two years and perhaps longer. In the elections scheduled for 2025 and 2026, incumbent parties will struggle in nearly all of them. While some presidential parties may be narrowly favored for reelection right now, recent trends suggest that hoping for a 52-48 win by the incumbent is not a smart bet.

If the lesson politicians take from the last six years is “win big or not at all,” that creates negative incentives for democracy. Presidents who aren’t committed to democracy will aim to consolidate control, manipulate institutions, use government budgets to buy popularity, and divide their opponents and keep them under pressure so they cannot pose a serious challenge. There will be a continued push toward Bukelismo, popular among voters who demand a strong response to the crime problem. The Salvadoran president’s tactics to manipulate democracy will be just as popular among politicians who want to hold on to power.

That “win big or not at all” corollary to the anti-incumbent wave is my big concern for the elections in the coming two years. Noboa in Ecuador and Castro in Honduras are fighting dirty, using that paragraph above as their game plan. The only way for Arce to hold on to power in Bolivia is to do the same. Peru’s Congress is setting the rules to keep the establishment politicians in power even as the vast majority of Peruvians demand change.

It is possible that this trend will suddenly halt in the coming years as incumbents begin to win close elections again, but consider the electoral calendar and the current situation in each country and then ask yourself if that is the likely scenario.

Separately, the region’s leadership is in the process of shifting to the right due to the electoral pendulum swinging and the continued anti-incumbent wave. In the same way people overanalyzed the fact that so many governments were leftwing in 2022, there will be someone in 2026 or 2027 who produces a map of rightwing governments and declares it a major trend. It’s a minor trend caused by the luck of timing. The region will start to shift back by 2030. That’s just how these things go when incumbents lose most elections.

Still, that minor rightwing trend will be accurate for at least a few years. Milei and Bukele are having their moments. As I wrote in WPR this week, Brazil’s Bolsonaro is attempting to use Trump’s victory in the US to regain momentum for his side. Chile and Colombia will likely shift towards opposition parties that are more conservative than their current presidents. In countries where they are competitive, the left wins by moving to the center (see Uruguay), in contrast to the right winning by moving to the extreme.

There is no regional ideology among these right-wingers that makes them inherently authoritarian, but some of them certainly have an anti-democratic and authoritarian streak. As they come to power and see that the only way to hold on to power is to consolidate control and ensure big wins, the region’s democratic institutions and civil society will struggle further.

This is a good time to note that despite what I wrote in the previous paragraph, the three most authoritarian countries in the hemisphere, the three that do not allow free and fair elections or any transfer of power, define themselves as leftist. They win big by outright cheating rather than muddled rule changes and manipulation. It’s a regional stain on the left. The awful governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela will continue to undermine the legitimate critiques that people will have of rightwing populist authoritarians in the coming years. The fact Maduro both fit the anti-incumbent wave by losing the election this year and then held on to power due to a full consolidation of control over the institutions is an extreme example of what I fear could come down the pipeline in a few other countries if we play out the current trends to their natural conclusion.

So this is where we are as we end the election year in 2024. Populists continue to do well as the anti-incumbent and anti-establishment wave that I wrote about back in 2019 continues years later. The only exceptions to the anti-incumbent wave are the presidents who can dominate their opponents; narrow victories aren’t happening. This creates incentives for incumbents to engage in populism and power politics that will allow them to win big. The “win big or not at all” corollary to the anti-incumbent wave is the trend to watch.