I think it's worth noting that a *lot* of governments who were the incumbents during the pandemic have been turfed out (see recent European elections, Brazil, Trump in the US etc).
It's not a universal trend (the Danish coalition, Trudeau's Liberals, Portugal, Macron in France, etc), but I do wonder whether incumbency has been depreciated as an electoral advantage in countries where COVID was badly handled, or the government got roped into a scandal over lockdown rules etc.
During 2020, most governments got a boost in the polls, but restriction fatigue, paired with any COVID scandals (UK's partygate etc) over the succeeding 24 months seems to have pushed the scales in the other direction.
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