With almost half of the world’s population residing in countries holding executive or legislative elections in 2024, it’s set to be the busiest election year ever recorded.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, uses collated 2024 global elections data from our 2024 Global Forecast Series as well as from Time, while country populations are taken from Worldometer as of January 2024.

Many people are already aware of the U.S. presidential and legislative elections set to be held on November 5th, especially due to American influence on the global political stage and media coverage.

But two governments affecting larger populations, India and the European Union, are also slated to have elections in 2024.

Below, we sort the countries expected to hold elections in 2024 by population (countries with no set election date yet have been marked “N/A”):

A few notable elections have already occurred. Taiwan held general elections on January 13th, with the more anti-China Democratic Progressive Party retaining the presidency but losing its majority in the legislature.

Pakistan also held elections on February 8th, with former Prime Minster Imran Khan’s party and affiliates winning a plurality of seats but losing power to a military-backed coalition.

Pakistan’s election results were cast into doubt by foreign observers and media, with Khan having been arrested and sentenced to prison on corruption charges. It is far from the only country holding controversial and potentially undemocratic elections in 2024.

Bangladesh’s landslide January 7th elections were boycotted by the opposition and voters, and Russia’s March 15th elections had three anti-war presidential candidates barred from competing, including Alexei Navalny before his controversial death in February.