The World Ahead | Graphic detail

2024 is the biggest election year in history

But there is more to democracy than voting

Nov 13th 2023

In 2024, countries with more than half the world’s population—over four billion people—will send their citizens to the polls.

But many elections are not fully free and fair. Some of these will have no meaningful influence on governments.

Our sister organisation, EIU, grades countries out of ten according to the state of their democracy and categorises them from authoritarian regimes, to hybrid regimes and democracies.

Authoritarian

Hybrid

Democracies

In the most democratic countries, such as Britain, elections will decide the next government or cause a substantial change in policy.

In Russia, one of the least democratic, the vote is very unlikely to weaken Vladimir Putin’s grip on power.

For countries in between, such as India or the United States, elections still matter, and may even be free and fair. But other aspects of democracy, such as participation or governance, have weaknesses.

Some places, such as Brazil and Turkey, will not hold general elections in 2024 but have local or municipal elections in which the whole country will participate.

Similarly, the European Union’s 27 member states will elect the bloc’s next parliament.

More people will vote in 2024 than in any previous year. But this great march to the ballot box does not necessarily mean an explosion of democracy.

According to our calculations, 76 countries are scheduled to hold elections in which all voters have the chance to cast a ballot in 2024. Of the 71 covered by EIU’s Democracy Index, 43 will enjoy fully free and fair votes (27 of which are EU members); the other 28 do not meet the essential conditions for a democratic vote. Eight of the ten most populous countries in the world—Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia and the United States—will hold elections in 2024. In half of these, elections are neither free nor fair and many other prerequisites of democracy, such as freedom of speech and association, are absent. Elections in Bangladesh, Mexico, Pakistan (all hybrid regimes, which combine elements of democracy and authoritarianism) and Russia (an authoritarian one) are almost certain not to bring regime change.

Brazil, India, Indonesia and the United States, meanwhile, are classified by EIU as “flawed democracies”, meaning that elections are free, fair and allow for the possibility of change, but their political systems have weaknesses. In February in Indonesia, the most populous country in South-East Asia, the centre-left PDI-P is likely to win the legislative and presidential elections. In India in May, Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP, the world’s biggest political party with more than 180m members, is likely to win despite rising anti-incumbent sentiment. And in Brazil in October municipal elections will reveal whether the left-wing Workers’ Party of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva can make gains at the expense of the right-leaning Liberal Party, which dominates congress and is backed by Lula’s right-wing predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

Then in November voters in the United States will elect their next president, as well as the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. Of the five aspects of democracy that EIU measures—electoral process and pluralism; functioning of government; political participation; political culture; and civil liberties—America’s lowest score is for political culture. President Joe Biden is likely to face Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, in a repeat of 2020.

It is not only the biggest elections that will capture the world’s attention: Taiwan’s vote in January will shape the island’s relations with China at a critical time for the would-be independent island, which is home to 24m people. The pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party is likely to retain control of the presidency and the legislature.

*Includes legislative, presidential and EU elections, as well as nationwide elections at the municipal or regional level in 2024 and in 1950-23 for countries of over 100m people

The two continents with the largest number of countries voting in 2024 are Europe (37) and Africa (18), though they could hardly be further apart in the Democracy Index. The Middle East and North Africa is the region with the lowest overall score (3.3), while sub-Saharan Africa is not much better (4.1). African countries with a combined population of over 330m, including Algeria, Ghana and Mozambique, will hold elections. The biggest will be in South Africa, home to more than 60m people. A divided and weak opposition means that, despite a series of corruption scandals, the ruling African National Congress is almost certain to win again.

Western Europe, meanwhile, scores highly in the index with an average of 8.4. The European Parliament elections in June will bring the issue of migration to the fore. The EU is on track to receive over 1m asylum applications this year, the most since a rush of arrivals in 2015-16. Many European politicians and voters see the influx of migrants as a threat, despite a mounting shortage of workers. The elections may shift the Parliament to the right as voters opt for parties calling for stricter controls on immigration.

And there is one scheduled election in Europe that, if it takes place, will be as much an act of defiance as democracy. Ukraine is due to elect a president in 2024. Volodymyr Zelensky, the incumbent, has not ruled out holding the vote, despite the country being under martial law, which forbids it. Any election that takes place while swathes of the country are under foreign occupation, and millions of Ukrainians remain displaced from their homes, could never be truly free or fair. A successful vote, were it possible, would be a show of resistance to Russia’s attempts to crush Ukrainian independence. But a botched one could undermine Ukraine’s efforts to be recognised as a democracy. ■

Countries with an election in 2024	Democracy Index 10=most democratic	Population millions	Expected month of election
Algeria	3.7 Authoritarian	46	Dec

Austria*	8.2 Full democracy	9	Jun

Bangladesh	6.0 Flawed democracy	175	Jan

Belarus	2.0 Authoritarian	9	Feb

Belgium*	7.6 Flawed democracy	12	Jun

Botswana	7.7 Flawed democracy	3	In 2024

Brazil†	6.8 Flawed democracy	218	Oct

Britain	8.3 Full democracy	68	In 2024

Bulgaria*	6.5 Flawed democracy	7	Jun

Burkina Faso	3.1 Authoritarian	24	In 2024

Sources: EIU; UN; V-dem 4; The Economist