An interactive companion to our research paper.
When a sitting leader (or governing party) chips away at democracy, weakening courts, muzzling the press, tilting the rules, and then runs to stay in power, do voters throw them out? This page lets you explore the elections behind that question. We gathered 105 such elections across 63 countries between 1995 and 2024, and recorded who ran, how the vote turned out, and whether the leader was returned to office or defeated. Thirty of those leaders lost, about one in three. The odds depended heavily on how competitive the contest still was: 41% were defeated where elections remained meaningfully free and fair (22 of 54), against 16% where they were not (8 of 51).
Each shaded country had at least one election in the data. Darker shading means more elections. Hover over a country to see the years and how many leaders were re-elected or defeated.
Every row is one election in which a leader who had been weakening democracy ran to stay in power. Use the menus to filter, type a country name to search, or click a column heading to sort. Click any row marked with ⓘ to see the candidates, their vote shares, and the electoral system.
| Country | Year | Political system | Outcome |
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