Where do people practicing various religions live and what types of governments do they live under? By comparing the governmental regimes of countries with their religious populations, we can begin to explore the relationship between religion and democracy. Do some religions correlate with democracy more than others? Are there regional patterns?

The Democracy Index was created by the Economist Intelligence Unit. It is a weighted average of indicators in the categories of electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Using the index score, governments are categorized as an authoritarian regime, hybrid regime, flawed democracy, or full democracy.

In the visualization below, I paired the 167 countries in Democracy Index with religious composition data from the Pew Research Center. The cartogram displays relative religious populations of countries. The axis toggle switches the y-axis from a list of religions to countries. The interactive legend filters the types of regimes.

See the interactive vizualizaiton here.