The Economist’s The World in 2004 makes the extraordinary claim that this year, about half the world’s population – or approximately 3 billion people – will have the option of voting for their federal government this year.
I can only think of Canada, India, and the United States, but those three together don’t even make up a quarter of the world’s population.
What are the other countries?
And if it is true, has it ever happened before?
Indonesia (population 234,893,453) is having a general election this year. That helps bring the numbers up to around a quarter.
I do agree that “half” seems like an exaggeration.
Hmmm, there’s a European Union election this year too - you don’t think the article might be disingenuously including this?
[http://www.electionworld.org/election/calendar.htm]Elections calendar from electionworld.com
Among other large countries (than those already named), Russia has presidential elections, and Japan parliamentary ones.
I wonder what exactly the article claimed - for countries that have separate parliamentary and presidential elections (or even separate elections for bicameral parliaments), does any of those count?
Fixed electionworld.com link, sorry.
I don’t know. I can check the magazine tonight (I was reading it at work) to see if they lump the European Union together as a seperate entity in their “Europe” section.
Thanks for the link.
I noticed Canada’s not on the list, but that’s probably because the date for our election hasn’t been announced yet.
And yes, I do believe parliamentary and presidential elections are being lumped together – after all, both Canada and the US are being counted in that.
I got the impression (and I can double-check tonight) that we’re talking about any federal election that results in the leader of a country. That wouldn’t include an election of, say, just an upper or a lower house in a country with just a presidential system, but it would include the election of the lower house in, say, Britain or Canada.