Where is the anti-incumbent wave going?
It’s always possible to say that every country is different and only local conditions matter. But regional trend maps are more fun.
If you look at a map of Latin American elections from 2018 to 2023, the narrative is fairly clear. The hemisphere (also reflected globally) went through an anti-incumbent wave that provided a clear regional trend.
With ruling party victories in Mexico, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic in 2024, I tried to explain it as incumbents could “win big or not at all.” That newsletter from last December suggested that close elections tilted toward the opposition, but incumbents who could dominate and divide their opponents could pull off victories.
The elections so far in 2025 have been more of a mixed bag. Challengers won in Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname. Incumbent victories in Belize and Guyana looked like the big wins I discussed in 2024. Ecuador, Canada, and Jamaica, on the other hand, were relatively narrow victories by incumbent parties in what had appeared to be an anti-incumbent environment in the months leading up to the election.
A few notes:
Bringing in Canada and the Caribbean into this discussion moves beyond the LatAm-focused framework I use in the 2018-23 map, but it may help add additional tea leaves to read going into Latin America’s big election cycle over the next 16 months.
The Ecuador election, in particular, has me wondering if the trend is broken. Sure, it can be explained away by pointing at Noboa’s particular political skills or Correa’s ongoing failures as a polarizing opposition leader. Mathematically, Noboa won that runoff by a large margin, but the tight first round shows just how close the election was until the final weeks.
Post-hoc, whether the trend has changed or not will look obvious. When I redo this map in a few months, if most or all of the countries’ elections lean toward oppositions, Ecuador will be an exception. However, if the region sees more unexpected ruling party victories, it would be a sign of a completely broken trend.
Whether the anti-incumbent bias still exists impacts the right-left ideological map in the region. Costa Rica is the only country with upcoming elections that has an incumbent right-wing president. Bolivia is about to flip from left to right1. But the other five big upcoming elections all feature left-wing incumbent parties. In an anti-incumbent environment, most or all were expected to flip to the right. If governing parties can hold on in a few of those countries, the regional map could look quite different.
Both the left-right and incumbent-opposition questions hang over Argentina’s midterms. Until a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that Milei’s party would do quite well and the Peronists would struggle. Yesterday’s provincial elections in Buenos Aires (the topic of tomorrow’s newsletter for paying subscribers) suggest that Milei has been politically weakened by some combination of the economy and the corruption scandal.
Many analysts had been pointing at Milei as a starting point for the region tilting back toward more right-leaning politicians. What does it mean for Milei fans and imitators in other countries if his political capital falls before those other elections occur? Is it harder for rightwing challengers across the region to win if Milei’s experiment is seen as failing rather than successful? If Milei falters, one narrative that may emerge is that the supposed ‘rightward pivot’ in the region may stall before it begins.
There is a Trump factor looming in the background of nearly every election, but it’s not a cohesive narrative. The Liberals won in Canada due to an anti-Trump vote, and Lula has seen a clear political boost from his conflicts with the US president. But incumbent victories in Ecuador, Guyana, and Jamaica all followed those presidents leaning into their alliance with the current US administration. I think discussions of US politics will play into every upcoming election, but it won’t lead to a clear left-right or incumbent-challenger benefit.
My goal for today’s newsletter was to write down some thoughts without a big grand conclusion. Nearly every government in the hemisphere continues to struggle with delivering on campaign promises, but voters aren’t punishing governments quite as hard as they were a few years ago, making the trends harder to grasp.
Comments are open on this post for those who want to add their opinions and analysis about where the region will turn next.
Or center? There is also an outlier scenario of a “great centrist wave” that would upend the narrative of the past ten years. It would also make for a fun map in the future.