The Daily Populous Wednesday March 5th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by ourworldindata.org and submitted by cgiattino

People might associate democracy with having the right to vote. But meaningful democracy is much more than that.

In 2022, nearly every country granted its citizens the right to vote. 85% of them had an elected parliament and government. In 82%, elections were multi-party, meaning that people had more than one option on the ballot. You can see this in the chart.

But, fewer than two-thirds of these elections were genuinely competitive. In others, voters were systematically pressured or intimidated, the timing of elections was violated, or election fraud influenced the results.

Even more concerning, in only 39% of countries were people able to express their political opinions and associate freely.

As a result, just over one-third of countries recently held elections that met all of these democratic criteria and can be considered truly free and fair.

Find out which countries have all democratic criteria and which don't →

OpticBomb on March 5th, 2025 at 11:07 UTC »

The fact that there are people still who have an issue with this is pretty pathetic. I was probably under 10 years old by the time I realized what homo and hetro sexuality was, and that it's irrelevant to me how other people choose to form their relationships.

Grown adults still clutching pearls over same sex relationships just demonstrates a backwardness that is quite frankly, embarrassing to witness.

But I'm glad at least it's trending in the right direction. :)

parental92 on March 5th, 2025 at 10:10 UTC »

The more open people are, the better more colorful our society will look like. Leave no room for hate.

cgiattino on March 5th, 2025 at 10:07 UTC »

Quoting the text from the author, Hannah Ritchie:

> When I was born in 1993, one-third of people in the United Kingdom said they “would not want homosexual neighbors”. Today, that’s less than 5%.

> As you can see in the chart, the acceptance of same-sex relationships has increased in many other countries, too. This data comes from the Integrated Values Survey.

> Attitudes to homosexuality tend to be far more positive in Western Europe and North and South America than in other parts of the world. In many countries across Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa, the majority of surveyed respondents still say they would not want homosexual neighbors.

> Explore the data on attitudes to homosexuality across the world →