Universal Voting Rights Expand Across the World as More Countries Hold Inclusive Elections
August 25, 2026 — The global spread of universal voting rights has accelerated dramatically over the past two centuries, with far more countries now allowing both men and women to participate in national elections in practice.
Data presented by Our World in Data, based on the Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED), tracks the development of voting rights from 1789 through 2025. The dataset distinguishes between countries where universal voting rights are available to both men and women, those where they are available only to men, and countries without universal voting rights in practice.
A Major Historical Shift
The chart shows that in the late 18th and 19th centuries, universal voting rights were rare. For much of that period, a large share of countries did not provide broad voting rights, while political participation was generally restricted by gender, status or other conditions.
The situation began changing more rapidly during the 19th and 20th centuries as electoral institutions expanded and more countries introduced broader suffrage. The number of countries providing voting rights to both men and women increased particularly strongly during the second half of the 20th century.
By 2025, the category representing universal voting rights for men and women accounted for the large majority of countries represented in the dataset.
Women’s Right to Vote Was a Key Turning Point
One of the most significant developments was the expansion of women’s suffrage. In many countries, men gained voting rights substantially earlier than women, creating a period in which elections existed but political participation remained restricted by gender.
The LIED data separately tracks universal male and female suffrage and combines those indicators to determine whether a country has universal voting rights.
The gradual disappearance of the “men only” category reflects the spread of women’s voting rights across different regions. This transformation became especially visible during the 20th century.
Voting Rights and Elections Are Not Exactly the Same
The dataset uses an important definition of voting rights “in practice.” It considers whether people can exercise the right because the parliament and government are actually elected.
This means the measure is not simply a record of whether a country’s constitution formally says citizens have voting rights. The broader electoral environment also matters when determining whether those rights operate in practice.
At the same time, the indicator does not account for informal restrictions or legal restrictions based on factors such as age, criminal conviction, disability or local residency.
Democracy Has Expanded, But Progress Has Not Been Linear
The historical record also shows that the expansion of democratic rights has not been a completely uninterrupted process. Countries have experienced democratic transitions as well as periods of political reversal.
Our World in Data’s broader democracy dataset tracks different political regimes, including non-electoral autocracies, male democracies, electoral democracies and full democracies.
This distinction is important because universal suffrage alone does not capture every feature of a democratic political system. Competitive elections, political freedoms and the ability of citizens to meaningfully influence government are also relevant.
Most Countries Now Have Broad Voting Rights
The latest 2025 data show that countries allowing both men and women to vote in national elections are now far more numerous than those without universal voting rights in practice.
Our World in Data’s dataset assigns a score of 2 when virtually all citizen men and women are permitted to vote in national elections, 1 when universal voting rights apply only to men, and 0 when neither men nor women have universal voting rights.
The dataset was updated in April 2026 and covers the period from 1789 to 2025, with the underlying Lexical Index providing country-year information on electoral institutions and suffrage.
A Long-Term Transformation in Political Participation
The expansion of voting rights represents one of the most significant institutional changes in modern political history. Elections that were once limited to relatively small sections of society have gradually become systems in which the overwhelming majority of adult citizens can participate.
However, the data also underline that democratic rights should not be viewed as permanently guaranteed. Political institutions can change, and the existence of voting rights does not by itself guarantee competitive elections, political freedoms or effective democratic accountability.
The global trend toward broader suffrage nevertheless marks a dramatic transformation since 1789, when electoral participation was highly restricted in much of the world. Today, universal voting rights for men and women are the norm across most countries measured by the dataset, reflecting centuries of political reform and expanding participation.
