How we track elections
Your Vote Worldwide is a free civic platform that consolidates publicly reported election data into a single normalized record set. This page explains how races are classified, how campaign periods are defined, and how the dataset is curated.
Editorial stance
All summaries, status labels, and legitimacy notes are written in value-neutral, objective language. We avoid loaded or partisan descriptors and report what international observers and official electoral bodies have published — not editorial opinion. Where a contest is disputed or annulled, we link the original race to its rerun so the full record is traceable.
Election scope
Every race is classified as a national/federal election or a referendum, so the map and filters stay consistent across more than 230 countries.
Sovereign-wide contests — presidential, parliamentary, and legislative elections held at the national level.
National constitutional referendums, plebiscites, and ballot questions put to the whole electorate.
Election types
Raw source labels are consolidated into a small set of standard national types — Presidential, Parliamentary, General Election, Legislative, and Referendum — while preserving the original race name in each record. This keeps the type filter usable across countries that label the same kind of contest differently.
Campaign period definition
A race is marked Campaign Period when an active campaign is underway — from the official period start through polling day. Where a local authority does not publish a campaign window, we apply a standardized 37-day campaign period before the recorded voting date.
Races are automatically advanced to Completed once the current date passes the recorded end date, and upcoming races with set dates appear as Scheduleduntil their campaign window opens.
Status categories
Data normalization
Source records pass through a shared normalization layer that standardizes dates (ISO 8601), regions, levels, statuses, and candidate structures. Candidate lists are parsed into a uniform shape — name, party, vote share, and winner flag — whether the source provides a structured array or a delimited string. Latitude and longitude are preserved for map placement.
Biased or loaded summary language is neutralized, missing legitimacy scores are backfilled where an assessment exists, and post-2030 dates are capped. A daily synchronization pipeline re-aggregates official Electoral Management Body (EMB) sources so the tracker stays current.
Coverage scope
The dataset covers national and federal elections and referendums from 1900 to 2030 across more than 230 countries. Sub-national races (state, provincial, regional, municipal, and by-elections) are out of scope. Coverage prioritizes contests for which an official result or credible observer assessment is available.
