Two uncomfortable questions next to each ballot
Every election year produces a map of flags and dates. Diálogo Ciudadano’s electoral-risk tracker attempts something different: to place, next to each of the twenty-two 2026 elections profiled, two questions the conventional calendar does not ask. What kind of regime is voting? And under what digital conditions?
The first is answered by the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, which classifies each country into four categories on a 0-to-10 score over sixty indicators: full democracy (≥8), flawed democracy (6-8), hybrid regime (4-6) and authoritarian (below 4). The second is answered by Diálogo Ciudadano’s own trackers: whether that country has verified cases of spyware, internet shutdowns or censorship. The cross-reference is not a prediction of results nor a judgement on candidates. It is a comparable portrait of the conditions under which people vote.
The split: full democracy is a minority
The first thing the cross-reference reveals is that the democratic ground of the 2026 calendar is, for the most part, uneven.
| Regime category (EIU) | 2026 elections | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Full democracy | 6 | Costa Rica, Malta, Sweden, Denmark, New Zealand, Portugal |
| Flawed democracy | 7 | US, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Israel, Hungary, Latvia |
| Hybrid regime | 3 | Bangladesh, Thailand, Lebanon |
| Authoritarian | 6 | Russia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Myanmar, Haiti, Iraq |
Only six of the twenty-two elections profiled take place in full democracies. Six are held in authoritarian regimes. And the largest group —seven— are flawed democracies: countries with formally competitive elections but substantive problems in liberties, participation or institutional functioning. The conclusion is sober: in 2026, most of the voting world does so on democratic ground the EIU considers, at best, flawed.
The regime is not enough: the digital environment votes too
The most revealing part of the cross-reference is that regime category and digital risk do not always coincide. And there lies the gap the tracker seeks to capture.
| Country | Regime (EIU) | Verified digital risk |
|---|---|---|
| Hungary | Flawed democracy | Pegasus against journalists (Pegasus Project) |
| Israel | Flawed democracy | Home of NSO Group; surveillance under scrutiny |
| United States | Flawed democracy | Generative AI in campaigns; V-Dem warns of autocratization |
| Colombia | Flawed democracy | Pegasus purchase under investigation |
| Ethiopia | Authoritarian | History of internet shutdowns |
Hungary is, for the EIU, a flawed democracy —not an autocracy—; yet on its territory Pegasus use against journalists was confirmed. Israel is a flawed democracy that also hosts the headquarters of Pegasus’s maker. The United States is still classified as a flawed democracy, but V-Dem warns of accelerating autocratization, and its campaigns are already fought on generative-AI terrain.
A country can have formally competitive elections and, at the same time, a degraded digital environment that erodes voting integrity from within. Spyware against a journalist, an internet shutdown in opposition areas, or a wave of AI disinformation do not change the regime category, but they change the real conditions under which people inform themselves and decide. That is why the tracker flags both dimensions separately and does not merge them into a single score: of the twenty-two elections, twelve take place in countries with verified digital risk.
From outrage to actionable data
This profile is designed as data infrastructure, not as an opinion piece. A political-risk analyst, an electoral observation mission, an insurer covering operations in emerging markets, or a platform’s electoral-integrity team need exactly this: a comparable, country-by-country profile that cross-references regime with digital environment and links each claim to its source.
The tracker’s structure allows filtering by region, by regime category or by the presence of digital risk, and updates when the EIU publishes its annual index or when a new verified case enters Diálogo Ciudadano’s trackers. The world map colours each voting country by its profile, and clicking it leads to the detail. The value lies not in a single final score, but in making comparable, on one grid, the conditions under which the world votes in 2026.
How to read it honestly
The profile should be read with its limit up front. The regime category is a methodological judgement by the EIU, rigorous but debatable —V-Dem, Freedom House or International IDEA use different scales and sometimes disagree—. Diálogo Ciudadano always attributes that classification to its source and does not present it as its own verdict. Digital risk is flagged only where a public verified case exists; its absence does not prove there is no surveillance, only that none has been documented.
And above all: this tracker does not say who will win or whether an election will be clean. It says something more modest and more useful for anyone needing to assess the terrain —under what institutional and digital conditions each vote is held—. It is the difference between knowing there is an election and knowing how solid the ground beneath it is.
Methodology note
Regime categories come from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index and are complemented by V-Dem’s Democracy Report; they are attributed to those sources and are not the outlet’s own judgement. Digital risk is flagged by cross-referencing Diálogo Ciudadano’s spyware and internet-shutdown trackers, only where a public verified case exists. Results are not predicted nor candidates assessed. One main election per country is recorded. The charts and map are computed from each record’s attributes.