Anti-incumbency is sentiment in favor of voting outincumbent politicians, for the specific reason of being incumbent politicians. It is sometimes referred to as a "throw the bums out" sentiment. Periods of anti-incumbent sentiment are typically characterized bywave elections.[1] This sentiment can also lead to support forterm limits.
In atwo-party system, anti-incumbent voters have only one party to vote for, when voting against the incumbent; in amulti-party system,public mood, i.e., the tendency of opinions held by voters over a set of related policy issues, can determine which parties receive the anti-incumbent vote.[2]
When voters perceive times as bad, this can cause anti-incumbent sentiment. However, this is subject to biases. Perceptions of whether, e.g., economic conditions have worsened during a politician's term are influenced bypartisan bias, for instance.[3] In the United States, reliance onpartisan media, as opposed tomainstream media, is associated with anti-incumbent attitudes towardCongress.[4] New democracies' elections, such as those in Central and Eastern Europe, and in Latin America and Asia, often are characterized by anti-incumbency.[5]
In 2024, almost every incumbent party worldwide facing election in 2024 lost power, as was the case in theUnited Kingdom,United States,Ghana,Senegal, andBotswana; or faced a loss in vote share, as was the case inSouth Africa,India,France, andJapan.[6][7] Among democracies, over 80 percent saw the incumbent party lose support compared to the last election.[8] This is the first time this has ever happened since 1905 (when data was first recorded) and the first time in thehistory of democracy, asuniversal suffrage began in 1894.[9]
In Bulgaria, virtually every government has been ousted from power after one legislative period.[5]
The2018 Bhutanese National Assembly election had an anti-incumbent result.[10]
India has the highest rate of anti-incumbency in the world,[11] with incumbents from the ruling party having only a fifty-fifty shot at returning to parliament.[12] For example, since 1985, the electorate inAssam has oscillated between voting theAsom Gana Parishad and theIndian National Congress to power.[13] InKarnataka, the last time the ruling government was re-elected was in the 1985 Indian elections.[14]Kerala has always voted in whichever is the opposition pre-poll alliance from the1982 assembly elections until the2021 election.[15]Voter turnout does not appear correlated with incumbents' electoral performance.[16]
In 2018, India's period of anti-incumbency was accompanied by acute rural distress, multiple farmer agitations and serious joblessness.[17]
In the2010 Mexican gubernatorial elections, incumbents from theInstitutional Revolutionary Party,National Action Party, andParty of the Democratic Revolution were rejected.[18]
Eras of anti-incumbent sentiment included theGilded Age, in which the majority party in theU.S. House of Representatives shifted six times in the 15 Congressional elections between 1870 and 1900, with three of those shifts involving losses of more than 70 seats by the majority party.David M. Kennedy notes, "Generations of American scholars have struggled to find a coherent narrative or to identify heroic leaders in that era's messy and inconclusive political scene."[1]
The1992 United States elections were also characterized by anti-incumbent sentiment, as a stubborn recession and persistently high unemployment fuelled voter dissatisfaction.[19] A 2013 poll found that 60% of Americans would vote to "defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including [their] own representative" if that option were available.[20]
The2024 United States presidential election also fueled considerable anti-incumbent sentiment, particularly amongGeneration Z, primarily due toimmigration policy,post-COVID inflation, theGaza war, andage and health concerns regarding the incumbent presidentJoe Biden.[citation needed]
The concept of anti-incumbency, at least with regard to U.S. elections, is controversial, since more often voters will punish only one party.[21] Three organizations that supported voting out incumbents were Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out, Vote Out Incumbents Democracy and Tenure Corrupts.
A perceived disadvantage of anti-incumbency, with regard to judicial elections, is that good lawyers will not want to accept what they regard as a revolving-door judgeship.[22] Another criticism of anti-incumbency is that it causes political parties to focus on single-term policies rather than long-term development.[15]
The incumbents in every single one of the 10 major countries that have been tracked by the ParlGov global research project and held national elections in 2024 were given a kicking by voters. This is the first time this has ever happened in almost 120 years of records. ... That different politicians, different parties, different policies and different rhetoric deployed in different countries have all met similar fortunes suggests that a large part of Tuesday's American result was locked in regardless of the messenger or the message. The wide variety of places and people who swung towards Trump also suggests an outcome that was more inevitable than contingent.
For instance, a 2013 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 60% of Americans said that they would vote to "defeat and replace every single member of Congress, including [their] own representative" if they could (Montanero).