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Right to vote

Map No. 359

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This map shows the number of years that all women and men in each territory have had an equal right to vote. This is often termed ‘universal suffrage’ however this generally does not include the vote for children.

The first territory where all adults had the right to vote was New Zealand in 1893; followed by the Scandinavian territories of Finland in 1906, Norway in 1913 and Denmark in 1915. By 1994, almost all adults in 190 of the 200 territories could vote.

Territories as political units are changeable entities, some of the more recent dates of suffrage reflect the formation, independence or emancipation of a political unit.

"There is ... room in politics for people who are open, willing to listen to others, those who understand and prove the forgotten truth that public administration is about the public. And this gives us new hope." Václav Havel, 2003

Territory size shows the the number of years of all adults in that territory having the right to vote. This is calculated by multiplying number of years of universal suffrage prior to 2004 by the total population.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page