Last year, as an anti-incumbent wave swept the globe, Mexico’s ruling leftwing Morena party recorded a landslide victory.
Those who study Latin American politics say the result offers lessons for Australia’s Labor government in its quest to buck the global trend and retain power at this year’s general election.
Claudia Sheinbaum won the election convincingly to become Mexico’s first female president by supporting the policy platform pioneered by her predecessor and party founder, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
That platform included minimum salary rises, direct cash transfers and labour reforms, along with price controls on grocery staples such as rice, soap and toilet paper.
These measures proved enough to overshadow concerns about the government’s handling of violence, lawlessness and rising government debt.
René Rejón, a researcher at the University of Melbourne who investigates the political impacts of structural injustice, says Mexican voters knew who to vote for when it came to combating the high cost of essentials, including food.
“While many things may be falling apart, the government did the one thing they said they would do regarding their social program – put the poor first,” says Rejón, who specialises in Mexican politics.
“Overall, inflation is high and living costs are high, but thanks to these targeted social programs people in the lower socioeconomic class are better off, or at least think they are.”
The Mexican election result rubbed against the counter-incumbent surge evident in 2024 polls in the US, UK and Senegal, as well as the slump in support for the ruling African National Congress in South Africa. Far-right parties created upheaval for incumbents in France and Germany, while Canada’s long-serving prime minister, Justin Trudeau, saw his support evaporate before even going to the polls.
While every country has its own electoral issues, the fact that governments of such vastly different ideologies experienced the same fate suggests voters are holding them responsible for the same problem – high living costs.
This makes the job of an opposition relatively easy, given it can simply ask voters whether they are better off now than before the last election – a question Donald Trump used during his campaign.
But Morena has been effective at complementing Mexico’s social program with highly symbolic moves, such as selling a presidential jet used by López Obrador’s predecessor, describing it as a luxury.
“They used symbols strategically and, if nothing else, this gave the impression that they were doing something; people felt heard,” Rejón says.
“I think Labor could do more of this.”
The Mexico example shows that an incumbent can win an election in a cost-of-living crisis if it runs on a radical platform aggressively tackling that issue, coupled with symbolic measures.
Incumbents who have run on more traditional, moderate platforms have paid the price.
Sujatha Fernandes, a professor of political economy and sociology at the University of Sydney, says moderate centrist policies lead to political defeat in the current climate.
“I see the Labor party falling into the same path as the US Democrats because they haven’t articulated any bold policy proposals in the way that left-leaning politicians across Latin America have done with great success,” Fernandes says.
Leftist governments have reemerged as the dominant political force in Latin America in recent years, marked by the election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil in 2022, with many using social programs to combat socioeconomic inequality.
Labor is unlikely to welcome comparisons with South American economies, but Fernandes says Australia is lacking “big strategies” on housing, health and education that have proved electorally successful.
“Instead, we have these really piecemeal, tangential, not rock-the-boat type policies,” she says.
“The Labor party, and US Democrats, occupy this sort of centrist position that has failed to really give solutions.”
Consider the following example.
Last year, as the public fumed about Australia’s dominant supermarkets charging high grocery prices while recording ever-increasing profits during a cost-of-living crisis, Labor ruled out divestiture powers as a policy response.
These powers, which exist in the US, enable a court to punish misuse of market power with something more threatening than a fine. They help deter bad corporate behaviour, and in no way resemble a Soviet-style command and control economy as Anthony Albanese has claimed.
The Coalition supported such a measure, outflanking Labor as the party that was tougher on grocery prices and robbing the government of momentum on an issue it had prosecuted for several months.
The Albanese government has had some victories, with a $300 energy rebate announced in the 2024 budget representing one of its more creative cost-of-living policies, and stirring debate about whether it was being too generous in its bid to ease pressures.
The Mexican government faced similar questions about its social policies, which actually helped cement a view among voters that it was the party fighting for the people.
Polling is tight before Australia’s cost-of-living election, due by May, with campaigning already under way.
If Labor does get buried in the global morgue for incumbents, it might take some comfort in knowing it could be back in government soon, given it’s difficult to be popular in a cost-of-living crisis.
