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A Conservative British prime minister sets the date for a long-awaited vote in the early summer and the United States follows with a momentous presidential election a few months later. It happened in 2016, when Britons voted for Brexit and Americans elected Donald J. Trump, and now it\u2019s happening again.<\/p>\n
Political soothsayers might be tempted to study the results of Britain\u2019s July 4 general election for clues about how the United States might vote on Nov. 5. In 2016, after all, the country\u2019s shock vote to leave the European Union came to be seen as a canary in the coal mine for Mr. Trump\u2019s surprise victory later that year.<\/p>\n
Yet this time, past may not be prologue. British voters appear poised to elect the opposition Labour Party, possibly by a landslide margin, over the beleaguered Conservatives, while in the United States, a Democratic president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., is in a dogfight with Mr. Trump and his Republican Party.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just in a very different place politically than the U.S. right now,\u201d said Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years, Brexit has faded as a political issue, and there is no British equivalent of Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
To the extent that there is a common theme on both sides of the Atlantic, said Ben Ansell, a professor of comparative democratic institutions at Oxford University, \u201cit\u2019s really bad to be an incumbent.\u201d<\/p>\n
By all accounts, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak decided to call an election a few months early because he does not expect Britain\u2019s economic news to get any better between now and the fall. Trailing Labour by more than 20 percentage points in polls, Mr. Sunak, analysts said, is betting that the Tories can cut their losses by facing the voters now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Though there is little evidence that the American political calendar played into Mr. Sunak\u2019s decision, holding an election on July 4 has the ancillary benefit of avoiding any overlap. If he had waited until mid-November, as political oddsmakers had predicted, he would have risked being swept up in the aftermath of the American results.<\/p>\n
Political analysts were already debating whether a victory by Mr. Trump would benefit the Conservatives or Labour. Some postulated that Mr. Sunak could seize on the disruption of another Trump presidency as a reason to stick with the Tories, if only because they might get along better with Mr. Trump than Labour\u2019s leader, Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Now that is irrelevant: Britain will have a new Parliament, and very likely a new prime minister, before the Republicans and Democrats even hold their conventions.<\/p>\n
Still, Britain\u2019s election results could hold lessons for the United States, analysts said. The countries remain politically synchronized on many issues, whether it is anxiety about immigration, anger about inflation or clashes over social and cultural issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine there is a collapse of the Conservatives, like in Canada in 1993,\u201d said Professor Ansell, referring to a federal election in which the incumbent Progressive Conservative Party was all but wiped out<\/a> by the Liberals and even elbowed aside by the Reform Party as Canada\u2019s major right-wing party.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n