Almost all journalistic forecasts for 2024 emphasize that this will be the year of the elections. Every year it is, since elections are always called, here or there. But the concentration of calls to the polls scheduled for the year that has just begun is extraordinary. There will be elections in about seventy countries, with a combined population of around 4 billion people, half of whom, around 2 billion, have the right to vote.

Of these 2,000 million, the majority, about 900, will be Indians, given that India is already the most populous country in the world: in 2023 it will overtake China and exceed 1,428 million inhabitants, three more, now for now, that the country we used to call “the Asian giant”. The decision of these 900 million depends on whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has distinguished himself by populist and religious drift, obtains a third term that would add five years to the ten he already has.

In terms of number of voters, after India comes the European Union: around 400 million citizens will be able to elect the new European Parliament between 6 and 9 June. This will not be another election: a victory for the European People’s Party could lead to an alliance with the far-right formations, which have principles that do not coincide very much with those that have characterized the EU since its foundation. The Spanish voter has sometimes considered the European ones as something distant, even foreign; but this year’s are momentous for the community’s future.

Having said that, the elections that will cause a media uproar will probably be those of the United States, which at the moment are shaping up to be another fight between two boxers of the third age: the current president, the Democrat Joe Biden, and the Republican – but more Trumpist what republican – Donald Trump. They are planned for November and will summon 160 million voters.

The list does not end here. The British will also be consulted, given that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already announced that he wants to bring forward elections, in which he starts with a thirteen point disadvantage, according to the latest polls, to Labour’s Keir Starmer. And the Mexicans, who will choose between two women, Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez, for the presidency of a country with a contrasting masculinist tradition, where the number of fatalities in the war against drug trafficking has already reached 350,000. And the South Africans, who could end the majority of the ANC, the party of the long-lost Nelson Mandela, which has held power for well over thirty years…

The cheesy usually refer to the elections as “the festival of democracy”. This year we would therefore be faced with a continuous party, in the style of the bakalao route, in which parties would be linked with dances, fairs with festivals and discos with afterhours by a series of electoral colleges all over the planet.

But there are not only reasons for satisfaction. Among the many elections in 2024 are those of Russia, Iran and other countries where the democratic ritual is pure farce, a mask of authoritarianism with the most rancid imperial or theocratic ambitions. At the same time, populism and the far right are advancing everywhere, also in countries with a good democratic record, such as the United States, the leader of the so-called free world, the country with the most economic power and the most military spending, where the deterioration of the system manifests itself at different levels. Starting with the two candidates already mentioned, who disqualify each other, Biden recalling the ominous and extensive list of court cases in which Trump is embroiled, and the latter assuring that he is not physically or mentally fit to govern. And continuing for an electorate that gives Trump an advantage in the polls and celebrates, complicit, each of his bluster, lies or imputations, transforming them into an avalanche of new fund donations for the tycoon’s campaign.

Francisco de Quevedo said that “in the ignorance of the people there is the guarantee of the rule of the princes”. Today, perhaps I would add that in such ignorance there can also be their doom. This 2024 will be the year of the elections, yes. But, for all that has been said, it will also be the year in which voting will be dangerous in the global democratic party. Hopefully the party hangover isn’t monstrous.