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What the science of elections can reveal in this super-election year

As billions of people go to the polls in 2024, political scientists have a lot of data to sift through.
By
  1. Benjamin Plackett

    1. Benjamin Plackett is a freelance science journalist in Portsmouth, UK.

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A woman with a veil over her face registers to cast her vote during the Indian general election 2024

Nearly one billion Indians registered to vote ahead of the 2024 election, which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi return for a historic third term. Credit: Elke Scholiers/Getty

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By the end of this year, voters in some 65 countries and regions will have gone to the polls. That means close to half of the global population will have had the chance to cast a ballot of some sort, including almost 360 million people across the European Union. Not all of the world’s political procedures will be free and fair, but this year is still expected to represent the biggest manifestation of the democratic process in history. The geopolitical landscape of 2025 could therefore look very different from that of today, and it will have an impact not just on how science is funded, but also on which international collaborations will flourish or flounder.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01712-2

References

  1. Wang, W., Rothschild, D., Goel, S. & Gelman, A. Int. J. Forecast. 31, 980–991 (2015).

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