Your Evening Briefing: Half the World’s Population—and GDP—Is Heading to the Polls

Half the world’s population—and GDP— are heading to the polls at some point in 2024. Elections are scheduled in some of the world’s youngest democracies, Pakistan and Tunisia, and in the oldest, like the UK. The European Union is voting. So too is Taiwan. And Indonesia. And Mexico. In Russia, President Vladimir Putin’s re-election in March is all but certain. India is expected to return Prime Minister Narendra Modi to office. But on other ballots like in Austria or the US, the outcomes remain uncertain. The results from these votes will shape public policy in every corner of the globe: what to do about climate change and the economic impact of a warming world, how to handle surging immigration, what ballooning government debt’s impact on public projects will be, and how war and rivalries are reshaping geopolitical lines. Here’s a cheat sheet for the year and the economic fallout to monitor.

Iran captured an oil tanker off the coast of Oman, heightening tensions in the world’s most important trade lane for global crude supply. Only a few months earlier, the tanker’s cargo of Iranian oil was seized over US sanctions related to Tehran’s nuclear program. The incident brings Iran more directly into the shipping turmoil that’s gripped the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Over the past few months, a number of attacks on ships in the Red Sea, primarily by Iran-backed Houthi militants, have forced many merchant vessels to avoid the route and sail thousands of miles around Africa instead. The US and its allies are weighing options for retaliation, something Houthi leadership vowed a “big” response.