2024: a testing year for democracy

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had wanted to kick off the new year with a strong domestic start, tackling the cost of living crisis head on, in the hopes of improving his dire poll ratings. Instead, he has found himself firefighting on the international front, trying to navigate ...  Show more

Imagine a graph with one line going up over time. Below it, another line does just the opposite. It kind of looks like the letter K. On the FT's Swamp Notes podcast, Claire Jones and Rob Armstrong break down why people are saying that letter represents the state of the economy an ...  Show more

A divided US electorate made their choice at the polls yesterday, after candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spent a combined $3.5bn in their race for the White House. Plus, Germany’s government is in talks on next year’s budget amid fears the coalition could collapse.&nb ...

The US government has shut down after Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a spending deal before the October 1 deadline, and Sir Keir Starmer has tried to revive his floundering premiership by urging his Labour party to launch a “patriotic” fight against Nigel Farage’s R ...  Show more

This week is all about predictions, polling and risk taking - what do current polls tell us about who might win the 2024 presidential race? We get a behind the scenes look at how statisticians make their predictions, and how accurate they are. Our guest Nate Silver developed a fo ...  Show more

Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology firm at the center of several election-related conspiracy theories in 2020, was sold this month and rebranded as Liberty Vote. We discuss the practical implications of the transformation and how it could affect the 2026 midterm ele ...  Show more