Forget right or left. Voters are sick of whoever's in charge.

The leader of the UK's Labour Party, Keir Starmer, is expected to unseat Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

• People around the world are choosing to vote against the establishment.
• And this anti-incumbent trend is bad news for Biden. 
• Economic issues like inflation and rising income inequality are fueling voter dissatisfaction.

It's a bad time to be an incumbent.

From the UK to India, France to the US, voters are taking to the polls and making their voices clear through sweeping and shocking swings of political power.

Though some say right-wing movements are on the rise globally, in this year's elections, that's not universally the case. Some left-leaning parties are beating out those on the right, and vice versa.

With the cost of living and inflation rising and less social mobility following the COVID-19 pandemic, voters are taking out their anger on their country's leaders.

"I think inflation is probably the elephant in the room here," Brian Greenhill, a professor at SUNY Albany and political scientist who studies international institutions and globalization, told Business Insider.

Environmental activists protest against Rishi Sunak's ruling party, known as the Tories.

Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

In short, voters are just fed up — no matter who's in charge.

"I do think there are other longer-term structural issues too that are perhaps fueling this kind of anti-incumbent, but also more generally anti-establishment, trend," Greenhill said.

Voters want a chance

Globally, it's not hard to see an anti-establishment, anti-incumbency trend playing out.

• In the UK's election on Thursday, polling shows that the liberal Labour opposition party, led by Keir Starmer, is poised to unseat the 14-year rule of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party, according to Reuters.
• In France, support for President Emmanuel Macron's centrist government collapsed as far-left and far-right parties gained a higher percentage of votes this week in the first round of the country's two-round election process.
• In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's long-dominant party failed to win an outright parliamentary majority in last month's election, while the more democratically-minded opposition party gained steam.
• In South Africa's election last month, the African National Congress party lost its outright majority for the first time in 30 years, NPR reported.
• And in South Korea, President Yoon Suk Yeol's ruling conservative party suffered losses to the liberal opposition in April's parliamentary election, Reuters reported.

The list of global incumbent losses goes on — and that's not even mentioning the United States, where incumbent President Joe Biden is trailing behind Donald Trump in national polling ahead of the November election.

French protestors rally against the country's far-right movement in July 2024.

Olympia de Maismont, AFP/Getty Images

"There's a lot of dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working," Richard Wike, director of Pew's Global Attitudes Research, said on FiveThirtyEight's Politics podcast in June.

Just 36% of people in 12 countries — the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, South Korea, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden — are satisfied with the way their country's democracy is working, according to a spring 2024 poll from Pew Research Center. And that's down from 49% in 2021, the research shows.

"This dissatisfaction is a bit of a global trend in many countries," Wike added on FiveThirtyEight's podcast.

One of the biggest issues driving the surge in anti-establishment populist movements, Greenhill said, is rising income equality, which, though largely stemming from the 2008 financial crisis, was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Graffiti in the UK reading "eat the rich," a common phrase used among those who oppose income inequality.

Mike Kemp/Getty Images

Another factor, Greenhill added, is the worsening political polarization driven by social media echo chambers and dubious online news consumption.

In the US, incumbents have historically fared better than their opponents.

Between 1936 and 2012, 11 out of 14 presidents won their re-election races, but the tide appears to be shifting, TIME reported.

Greenhill pointed out that anti-incumbency frustrations tend to come and go, but that the growing populist, anti-establishment movement we're seeing now is, "at least in modern political history, somewhat new."

"The fact that Trump right now — after everything that's happened after January 6th and his felony convictions and his multiple criminal indictments — the fact that he's still leading in the polls shows that there's still a huge kind of reservoir of support for this kind of 'burn the house down' kind of approach to politics," Greenhill said.

And if the goal is burning down the house, Americans may be ready to light the match. So-called "double haters" — voters who dislike both Trump and Biden — have made up an influential chunk of the electorate in recent polls.

The dissatisfaction with Biden after his disastrous debate performance last week, is so strong globally and even among his own supporters, that it's reportedly led Biden himself to question if he can turn it all around.

If Biden does decide to step aside, it would present a unique situation: Who would voters choose when no direct incumbent is running in an anti-incumbent environment?

America may end up being the testing ground for that experiment.

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