Will the 2025 elections be a wipe out for the Center-Left?
Or will they turn back the rising tide of the Right?
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My readers may not be aware of it, but I used to be a professor of Political Science and Public Policy. I specialized in Campaigns and Elections. I also ran for state-level office in the late 1990s. So because of my background, I find analyzing election results to be a very interesting hobby.
On January 2, 2024, exactly one year ago from today, I published one of my most popular Substack articles. It was entitled “The Left has hit an historic dead end: and they cannot get out of it without rethinking their core assumptions.”
If you have not yet read the article, I would suggest that you do so now. In order to keep the length of this article manageable, I will not rehash my previous points.
In that article, I listed out all the recent national election results to show that the electoral decline of parties of the Left, particularly the Center-Left is very broad in scope.
In this article, I would like to:
Summarize results from Western elections in 2024 to see if this past year continued the trend of declining electoral support for the Left, and particularly the Center-Left.
Take a look at upcoming elections in 2025 to see if the trend is likely to continue.
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
2024 election results
Here is a list of the most important national elections in wealthy Western nations that took place in 2024. I will add a brief analysis of each.
United States: obviously, this was the big one.
In terms of international impact, this election outweighs all the other elections put together.
While the 2024 election was hardly the land-slide that Trump supporters claim, it was nevertheless a huge defeat for the American Left.
The Republicans won the Electoral College majority, a plurality of the vote, and a Trifecta in the federal government. This combined with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court suggests that Republicans can do largely what they want.
How the Republicans will use that power, however, is very unclear, though I have suggestions of what they should do in 2025 and an entire series of articles on the topic later this month.European Union: another big win for the Right.
For the first time in EU history, the combined parties of the Right won a majority of the vote (or very near one, depending upon how you define “the Right”).This election is so important because it shows the scope of the downward descent of the Left covers the vast majority of Europe. The Social Democrats, Liberals, and Greens all did very poorly, while every coalition on the Right gained seats. It is hard to get more decisive than that.
As is common in Europe, the cordon-sanitaire policy of not forming coalitions with so-called “Populist Right” meant that the Right chose not to take advantage of this big victory. This stigma against coalitions exclusively on the Right meant that the Christian Democrat Ursula von der Leyen formed a coalition with the Center-Left, instead of the Right.
This cordon-sanitaire policy will likely temporarily contain the policy influence of the Right, but my guess is that this strategy will only increase public alienation.
If the European Center-Left keeps shrinking at the same rate, this cordon-sanitaire strategy will soon become impossible.France: this election outcome is a very complicated one.
After a huge victory for the National Rally in the European elections mentioned above, President Macron scheduled national legislative elections hoping to catch the Rally off-guard.In terms of the popular vote, the 2024 French Parliamentary election was a huge win for the National Rally. Strategic withdrawals of candidates from the second round kept the National Rally from winning a majority of seats but only empowered the Left instead.
It is not clear if President Macron can survive in power much longer, as speculations of his resignation increase.
Both the French Center and Center-Left are in crisis. If trends continue, the National Rally will likely form a government sometime in the next decade. It is, however, very unclear what they will do with that majority.UK : finally an election that the Left can get happy about.
While the Labour UK party barely increased their popular vote share, Labour won a massive majority of seats in Parliament. The European Left celebrated a rare victory, but it is not clear that this is really a long-term deviation from the trend.
An almost immediate collapse in public support for the Labour party in the polls made this a bittersweet victory, and Reform UK is gaining fast. It is going to be very difficult for Labour to maintain momentum with this little public support. The Reform UK party currently has the most momentum and a Labour government after a very unsuccessful Conservative government gives them an excellent chance of growing fast.
Will Nigel Farage become the next Prime Minister or will the Tories bounce back?Portugal: a huge victory for the Portuguese Right.
The Center-Right Democratic Alliance won the most seats. Perhaps more importantly for the future, a new Rightist party, Chega, gained 18.1% of the vote, while the Liberal Initiative won 4.9%. Together with the Ceneter-Right Alliance party, the Portuguese Right won the majority of popular support for the first time since 1991.Ireland: the Left has always been weak in Irish electoral politics, and it did not get much better in this election.
The 2020 election made it appear that Sinn Fein was finally making an electoral breakthrough. During 2021 and 2022, it looked like Sinn Fein might become the most popular party, but their support collapsed in 2024. For the moment, Ireland seems to be settling back into its traditional domination by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, both parties of the Right.Romania: Now we are getting to some smaller and less influential nations that did not get as much press. The once-powerful Romanian Social Democratic party is still the largest party, but almost all other parties are on the Right. Its vote share is less than half what it was 12 years ago.
Austria: another big victory for the Right. The Freedom Party of Austria won its highest percentage vote in its history and came in first place. The once dominant Social Democratic party continues its decline. This was its worst election results since 1911!
Croatia: the Center-Left coalition continues its decline, and the Croatian Democratic Union maintains its dominance over Croatian politics.
Lithuania: a fairly strong showing for the Left.
The Social Democratic party of Lithuania came in first place with 19.7% of the vote, but they will have to work with parties on the Right to form a parliamentary majority.Belgium: because the Left-Right divide is on top of the linguistic divide between Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia, Belgian politics is very complicated. In Flanders, the Left is very weak, the Left is much stronger in French-speaking Wallonia. The three largest parties in Belgium, however, are on the Right and the Center-Left Socialists dropped to a mere 16% of the vote.
The Belgian Center-Left is clearly in decline from its previously strong electoral position.Iceland: somewhat similar to Lithuania, the Social Democratic Alliance bounced back to 20.8% of the vote to become the largest party. The conservative Independence party, which dominated Icelandic politics for almost one century suffered comparatively poor results.
Czech Senate: the Czech Left has been extremely weak since the fall of Communism, and they remained that way in this election.
Bulgaria: ditto above.
So while the Center-Left had some victories in the UK, Lithuania, and Iceland, the overall trend in 2024 was substantial increases in electoral support for parties of the Right. With the exception of the three nations above, the Center-Left is either very weak or seriously declining from a once-dominant position. In some cases, the parties to the Left of the Center-Left have prospered, but their increased support is less than the decline of the Center-Left.
Increasingly, the Center-Left needs to work with parties of the Right to form a governing coalition. This puts them in an impossible position: abandon their core beliefs to achieve power or sink into electoral irrelevance.
Meanwhile, the combined votes of parties on the Right keep growing…
Upcoming 2025 elections
But what about this year?
Can 2025 be the great pivot that turns around the secular decline of the Left, and particularly the Center-Left?
Let’s take a look.
Keep in mind that at this point, all we can do is look at pre-election opinion polls, which might turn out to be incorrect. And there could be dramatic events that cause sudden changes in popular support for the parties.
Here is a list of the most important national elections in wealthy Western nations currently scheduled to take place in 2025. I will add a brief analysis and the most recent polling data.
Germany (February 23) This is the big one.
Ever since the foundation of the German Social Democratic party (SPD) in 1875, the SPD has been the premiere Center-Left party on the European continent, if not the entire world.
All opinion polls point to a crushing defeat for Olaf Scholz’s SDP-Green-FDP coalition government. Now both parties on the Right are ahead of all parties on the Left. The German Right appears to be on a path to win a majority of the votes for only the second time since World War I.
The big question is whether the likely victorious conservative CDU-CSU party continues the cordon-sanitaire policy by snubbing the new Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and forms a coalition with the parties of the Center-left. My guess is that they will and electoral support for the AfD will continue to grow in response.
Canada (October 20 or sooner).
This is shaping up to be a huge landslide for the Canadian Right. As you can tell from the photo at the beginning of this article, Justin Trudeau’s popularity has declined so far that it is not even clear that he will remain Prime Minister until October.
If opinion polls are correct, this could be the Canadian Right’s biggest victory since 1958. This would be the Canadian equivalent of Trump’s 2024 victory.
Australia (on or before May 17)
This election is likely to be much closer than the two previous elections, with the winner looking like a coin flip.
If the conservative Liberal/National coalition pull out a victory, it will leave the very unpopular Labour party (UK) as the only party of the Left governing Anglo nations.
For a while, European Leftists could comfort themselves that the rightward trend was merely a European Continental trend, but no longer.
Polish Presidential election (1st round) (May)
This is the most likely election to result in a victory for the Center-Left. The Right is split between the Law and Justice party and the Confederation Liberty and Independence. The combined parties of the Right may win a majority of the vote, but this seems unlikely.
Norway (September 8)
Norway does not get a great deal of international media attention, but this election is still quite important. One of the few European Social Democratic parties that seemed to be defying the downward spiral of the Center-left was the Norwegian Labour party.
No more.
If opinion polls are accurate, the Labour party will come in third place to both parties on the Right for the first time since 1924. The Progress party, the most conservative party in Norway, may come in first place for the first time in Norwegian history.
The fact that the Norwegians abandoned the cordon-sanitaire in 2013 to form an all-Right majority coalition should make it easy for the Norwegian Right to form a majority coalition. It seems very likely the the Conservative and Progress party will dominate the next Norwegian government with the support of smaller conservative parties.
Czech Republic (unscheduled)
The Left is virtually non-existent in the Czech Republic, and that is very unlikely to change this year.
So what do we make of this?
Of course, all these pre-election polls could be wrong, but it looks like 2025 will be the continuation of the long-term trend of:
Long, slow decline of the Center-Left
Increased popular support for parties of the Right with a majority of the vote in sight.
The key issue in multi-party system is whether the Center-Right parties will continue the cordon-sanitaire stigma against all-Right coalitions. Continuing this tradition will only lead to more policy dysfunction. This strategy may contain the policy influence of the Right temporarily, but my guess is that this strategy will only increase public alienation.
Even though they do not have elections coming up soon, the Right in other large European nations like Spain and Italy are doing very well in public opinion polls.
Some pundits have dismissed this trend as an anti-incumbency wave by pointing to a few isolated victories by the Left outside the wealthy Western world. Trends outside Europe and the Anglo world do not clearly favor either the Left of the Right, but it is hard to miss the clear Rightward trend in the wealthy Western world.
Outside of Latin America, the Center-Left is generally weak and the Left is even weaker. And the Latin American Left has not exactly been a model of good governance, and many Latin American nations are marching toward Soft Totalitarianism or more traditional Hard Totalitarianism. Neither the Left nor Center-Left have demonstrated ability to turn this around.
Given how long this downward trend has been evident, one wonders why the Left is not willing to rethink its ideological assumptions and embrace policies of:
Long-term economic growth, and
Upward Mobility for the working class rather than government-financed redistribution.
I call this combination of policies the Progress-based perspective. But the parties on the Left seem to be incapable of making this common-sense pivot. I think this is strong evidence for the non-rational foundation of ideologies.
Maybe in 2026…
See also my other articles and podcasts on Ideology:
Why Ideologies Threaten Progress (Part 1 of 3-part podcast series)
Why ideologies fail (podcast)
Descent into a man-made Hell: Understanding modern Totalitarianism
You might also be interested in reading my “From Poverty to Progress” book series:
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Marine Le Pen trial. Le Pen way well be guilty; I have no idea. However, when the only penalty proposed is banning her from the ballot for 5 years, this stinks of banana-republic level, political corruption. Using the courts to eliminate the leading Presidential candidate is a significant escalation beyond the cordon-sanitaire.
In another escalation... Romania. The biggest electoral scandal that no media will talk about. When was the last time a EU state cancelled its election by judicial fiat? After voting had started? With exit polls already being reported? I can't think of one. Despite the "Russia, Russia, Russia" wailing from the ruling class, this looks like the Romanian (and EU) Left realizing they were about to get their butts handed to them and escalating as necessary to prevent it. They might believe Russia did it, but considering the trends you've identified here, no one else does.
In those 2 cases, there's nothing soft about the Left's authoritarian actions.
Finally, Georgia. Victoria Nuland may have retired, but this sure looks like Anglo-Left astroturf: Rose Revolution Part Deux. The alleged cause of the unrest is a law requiring foreign funded civil society groups (the CIA/State Dept's favorite vehicle to disrupt a country) to register as foreign agents. Hundreds of thousands of grassroots Romanians are marching on Parliament to make sure foreign governments can hide their meddling in Romanian elections. Yeah... right.
To the EU and Anglo ruling class, "un-democratic" can be translated as "not liberal". It's not democracy they object to; only electoral outcomes that are counter to rigid, Millian liberalism.
I would read the UK as supporting your thesis, not an exception from it. The left hugely underperformed their expectations. What happened on the right was that the establishment fake-right party was exposed as not representing the interests of the people. They were resoundingly punished for this, and Reform were the beneficiaries. The UK is also seeing a collapse on the left and a strong shift to the populist right.