Where the data comes from

The primary source for each record is the official Electoral Management Body (EMB) of the country holding the race.

• National Electoral Management Bodies (EMBs) — official election commission websites for each tracked country
• Official government gazettes and legislative record publications
• Constitutional court and supreme court rulings on disputed or annulled races

Where available, each election record links directly to the official commission page under "Official Election Commission".

Legitimacy notes and assessing-body attributions draw from the published findings of these missions:

• OSCE / ODIHR

  Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe — Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. Long- and short-term observer missions across Europe, Central Asia and North America.

• EU Election Observation Missions

  European Union EOMs that assess compliance with international commitments for democratic elections.

• UN DPPA / Electoral Assistance

  United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs — technical assistance and, where mandated, electoral integrity support.

• OAS

  Organization of American States — observation missions throughout the Americas.

• African Union

  AU Democracy and Electoral Assistance Unit and observer missions across AU member states.

• SADC / ECOWAS

  Regional observer missions from the Southern African Development Community and the Economic Community of West African States.

• The Carter Center

  Independent observation of elections against international democratic standards.

Quantitative legitimacy scores are informed by comparative indices from:

A daily automated pipeline re-aggregates the above sources, normalizes new races into the standard schema, and preserves hand-curated legitimacy ratings. The pipeline is create-only on each run to avoid race conditions, and annulled races are automatically linked to their reruns where a matching contest is found within three years.