2024: the year of elections Democracy under stress despite billions of votes

In January, as this bumper year of elections got under way, breathless editorials and reheated hot takes made it clear the stakes could not be higher.

- Jonathan Yerushalmy & Oliver Holmes

Time magazine called it a "make-or-break year for democracy", while others declared it "democracy's biggest test" and asked whether the very concept could make it to December intact.

In 2024, billions of people voted across more than 80 countries, including some of the most populous, most authoritarian and most fragile. Russians voted in polls that were characterised by their repression, while in Senegal, an attempt to delay elections led to the incumbent's downfall.

El Salvador's president found an election-winning formula through his fierce crackdown on gangs, while a brief experiment with democracy was seemingly snuffed out in Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab spring.

Throughout it all, the relative strength or weakness of global democracy hung in the balance, with the presidential election in the US sitting at the end of the year like a giant question mark.

How did democracy fare?

Even before the year began, warning lights were flashing around the world. Between 2020 and 2024 a fifth of all election results faced a challenge in some form, research from the democracy group International Idea found.

In the same period, one in five elections saw the losing candidates publicly reject the outcome, while opposition parties boycotted one in 10 elections. Combined, these factors were said to pose a serious challenge, as voters questioned the very viability of the electoral process. Across the year, experts found that the tent poles of successful democracies - freedom of speech, equality of participation and plurality of media and corporate ownership - were facing near-unprecedented threats. If not in decline, democracy was certainly under attack.

But as some forecast the further hollowing of democracy, well-organised citizens and oppositions showed how the slide into autocracy could be stymied.