Universal right to vote

How this is measured

The binary reading of the Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy: 1 where both men and women have the right to vote in practice *and* elections are held for both the chief executive and the legislature, 0 otherwise. Both halves matter, and the second is easy to miss — a country that grants universal suffrage but holds no executive election scores 0 here, so this is not a pure measure of who is enfranchised. It is also coded in practice rather than in law, and LIED deliberately disregards restrictions on grounds of age, criminal conviction, disability or local residency when judging universality. It says nothing about whether the vote is worth anything: a country can score 1 and hold thoroughly unfree elections, and many do. Coded back to 1789, which is what makes the long view of it interesting.

167 countries and territories have a figure for 2025. This is the most recent year the series covers well; the viewer holds every year from 1789.

Data by year

Source and licence

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