SIX GRAPHS

Americans Keep Voting for the Change Candidate

Voters around the world, including here in the U.S., are dumping the incumbent party at a higher-than-normal rate.

opinion

Americans have voted for change in 10 of the past 12 federal elections. And it’s not unique to the U.S.–voters around the world are dumping incumbent parties in 2024 at a higher-than-normal rate.

This fits an electorate where 75 percent of voters say we’re on the wrong track and only 22 percent trust the government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time.”

Federal government experience went from a virtue to a liability, with voters punishing the candidate who served in Washington longer in 11 of the past 14 elections.

The key question for 2024: Who is the ‘change candidate’?

1. Change Is the New Normal

In 10 of 12 U.S. federal elections this century, America voted to change the party controlling the House, Senate and/or White House.

2. Voters Around the World Are Also Choosing Change

More citizens in more countries are voting in 2024 than in any prior year in human history, and “so far a tsunami of change is sweeping ballot boxes worldwide.” (Time Magazine)

3. Americans Think We’re on the Wrong Track

For each of the past 21 years, American voters have reported to NBC News pollsters that the nation is “off on the wrong track,” a main reason they keep voting for change. 2023-2024 produced the highest levels of “wrong track” sentiment since the end of the Cold War.

4. U.S. Voters Lost Confidence in Our Government

As of April 2024, only 22 percent of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time. While this is a modest improvement over last year’s 16 percent (among the lowest measures in nearly seven decades of polling), it’s a far cry from the 1950’s & 1960’s, when more than 60 percent of Americans trusted Washington to do what’s right.

5. Voters Punish Candidates for Time Served in Washington

For decades, voters rewarded experience in federal government… from 1920 through 1964, the candidate with more (or equal) years of service in Washington won 11 out of 12 elections. But the sense of disorder in the late 1960s and early 1970s–rising crime, political assassinations, stagnation in Vietnam, stagflation in the U.S. economy, Watergate–led many to mistrust “Washington” and thereafter punish federal experience. The more “Washington” candidate has lost 11 of the most recent 14 elections.

6. So Who Is the ‘Change Candidate’ in 2024?

Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump seek to position themselves as the change candidate this election. Harris benefits as the “new” entrant after months of voter dismay at a Biden-Trump rematch, but she also represents four more years for the party in power and the current direction. Trump offers explicit policy change, but less a “new” direction than “back” to the previous agenda he’s espoused for the past nine years.

Bruce Mehlman is a Washington-based political strategist, former George W. Bush administration official and founder of a leading bipartisan government affairs and lobbying firm. His weekly slide decks and quarterly infographic analyses published on his free Substack have become essential reading for political pros and insiders on both sides of the aisle.

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