Over 50 countries in which close to 45% of the people in the world reside have gone to the polls or will go to the polls this year. This only includes those countries which conducted or will conduct national-level polls this year or are part of the nations which choose the European Parliament. Countries conducting local elections have been ignored. With the world’s population on the rise and many countries having elections this year, estimates indicate that 2024 could see the highest number of votes polled in history.
Most of these elections are concentrated in Asia, Europe, and Northern America. Some countries from Africa and South America also choosing their leaders this year.
Map 1 | The map shows the countries which are going to the polls or have already completed elections this year. The countries in Europe that are only voting for the European Parliament and are not choosing their country’s government have been highlighted with a different colour.
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An assessment of how free and fair the elections are in these countries shows that democracy is on the retreat in many of them. Only a few countries showed improvement in this area.
Chart 2 | The chart shows the free and fair election index, 2022 to measure the fairness of elections. The index score ranges from 0 (least free and fair) to 1 (most free and fair). The bigger the size of the circle in the chart, the higher the voting population of the country.
The free and fair election index is prepared by the V-Dem Institute based on expert assessments. It captures the extent to which election violence, government intimidation, fraud, large irregularities, and vote buying are absent in a country.
Also read | Data | India’s democratic values have eroded significantly: VDem
Comoros, the archipelagic country in Africa, fared the worst in the 2022 index. According to news reports, President Azali Assoumani was re-elected for the fourth term in January. The Opposition termed the poll “fraudulent”. Voter turnout was very low at 16% as the Opposition boycotted the polls. Countries in the subcontinent including India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan were either middling or in the lower half of the index. The two major parties in Pakistan are fighting over who will be Prime Minister, with Imran Khan, one of the candidates for the post, in prison. On the day of the polls, there was a mobile Internet shutdown and the results were delayed. Recently, a Mayor election in Chandigarh, India, was heavily criticised by the Supreme Court for the manner in which a BJP candidate was declared as winner. In the videos, the presiding officer appears to be defacing ballots which the Chief Justice of India called a “mockery of democracy”.
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Fellow Asian countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Mongolia also rank relatively low in the index. Earlier this month, in Russia, Boris Nadezhdin, who opposes the invasion of Ukraine, was not accepted as a candidate for the presidential election in March. Of the one lakh signatures of supporters he is supposed to get to prove his worth as a candidate, 9,000 were rejected by the Election Commission as invalid. India, with a score of 0.53 is right in the middle of the index.
Chart 3 | The chart shows the change in the free and fair elections index between 2012 and 2022.
Comoros, India, Hungary, Bangladesh, Poland, and El Salvador are among the countries where the index has deteriorated the most in the past decade. Only countries which showed at least some degree of decline in the index or improvement are depicted in the chart. Uzbekistan, Romania, and Togo are countries which have shown improvement in the index in the last decade.
Source: Our World in Data, International IDEA, World Bank and the Association of World Election Bodies
vignesh.r@thehindu.co.in, rebecca.varghese@thehindu.co.in
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