Electoral democracy index during each president's tenure

Every president since 1991, ranked by how the electoral democracy index changed from their first day in office. Politare shows what happened during a tenure; it does not claim the office-holder caused it.

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Tenures

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Party

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Results

Order

#	President	In office	Total	Per year
1	George W. Bush	20 Jan 2001 – 20 Jan 2009	+3.3 points 2000 → 2008	+0.4 points/yr
2	Joe Biden	20 Jan 2021 – 20 Jan 2025	+2.8 points 2020 → 2024	+0.7 points/yr
3	Bill Clinton	20 Jan 1993 – 20 Jan 2001	−0.5 points 1992 → 2000	−0.1 points/yr
4	Barack Obama	20 Jan 2009 – 20 Jan 2017	−1.5 points 2008 → 2016	−0.2 points/yr
5	Donald Trump	20 Jan 2017 – 20 Jan 2021	−7.0 points 2016 → 2020	−1.8 points/yr

Sorted by total, highest first. Every row is indexed to the last count complete before the first day in office ("from" marks a start that had to move because that count had no data, or because the period cut it); Levels are per cent changes, rates are differences in points; "per year" compounds levels and divides rates. Tenures with under 12 months, or under three observations, are left out. points, 0 to 100, V-Dem's 0 to 1 index times 100 · V-Dem Institute, V-Dem dataset v16 (v2x_polyarchy): the electoral democracy index, free and fair elections with wide suffrage and the freedoms of association and expression that make them count, as V-Dem's country experts rate them, with V-Dem's confidence interval; the 0 to 1 index times 100 · United States data · as of Sep 2026.