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How do Freedom House scores for the US compare to peer democracies in 2025?
Executive summary
Freedom House’s 2025 "Freedom in the World" reporting shows the United States is no longer among the very top-scoring democracies; Visual Capitalist summarizes that “53 countries are considered more free than the U.S.” in 2025 and that global freedom declined for the 19th consecutive year [1]. Freedom House’s raw datasets and processed versions (Our World in Data) provide the underlying 0–100 scores and sub-scores for political rights and civil liberties used to compare the U.S. with peer democracies [2] [3].
1. What Freedom House measures and how to read the numbers
Freedom House’s Freedom in the World aggregates 25 indicators into a 0–100 total score (40 points for political rights and 60 for civil liberties) that purports to capture free and fair elections, pluralism, expression, rule of law and personal autonomy; higher scores indicate more freedom [3]. The organization’s methodology and full country scoring are published annually and the data are also distributed in machine-readable form for researchers [2] [4]. Our World in Data republishes processed Freedom House political-rights and civil-liberties series to enable year-to-year comparisons [5] [6].
2. Where the U.S. stands in 2025 versus “peer democracies”
Visual Capitalist’s synthesis of Freedom House 2025 highlights that the United States has slipped relative to many liberal democracies: it reports “53 countries are considered more free than the U.S.” in the 2025 Freedom House-based ranking [1]. The aggregated Freedom House datasets and Our World in Data charts allow direct numeric comparison of the U.S. total score and its political-rights and civil-liberties sub-scores against peers such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, and other Western European and OECD countries [5] [3]. Specific numeric values for each peer in 2025 are available in Freedom House’s public tables and in the processed data files cited by Our World in Data and the Freedom House site [2] [4].
3. Why the U.S. fell relative to peers — Freedom House’s narrative
Freedom House’s 2025 narrative (as summarized in media re-analyses) frames the decline as part of broader democratic erosion: their global report documents deterioration in 60 countries during 2024 and notes long-term backsliding trends that also affect advanced democracies [7] [1]. Visual Capitalist specifically attributes the relative U.S. decline to perceived erosion of democratic institutions and rights over recent years, which shifted other countries ahead of the U.S. in the 2025 ordering [1]. For exact itemized reasons — which sub-indicators (electoral process, freedom of expression, rule of law, etc.) moved the U.S. score — refer to Freedom House’s country narrative and the downloadable scoring spreadsheet [2] [4].
4. How reliable and contested are Freedom House comparisons?
Freedom House is widely used but not uncontested. Critics (summarized in the Freedom House Wikipedia overview) argue the index can align with U.S. foreign-policy perspectives and sometimes exaggerate differences between liberal and non-liberal systems; academic studies have identified some systematic biases and sensitivity to methodological changes [8]. At the same time, Freedom House remains a standard, and organizations like Our World in Data republish and document its scores for transparent, reproducible comparison [3] [5]. Users should therefore treat rankings as comparative judgments that reflect Freedom House’s defined indicators and expert-assessment process, not as a single objective truth [8] [3].
5. Alternative measures and cross-checking
If you need a fuller picture, the Human Freedom Index (Cato/Fraser) measures personal and economic freedom on a different scale and timeline, offering another lens — it is co-published by Cato and partners and may rank countries differently because it blends economic with personal liberties [9] [10]. Our World in Data’s Freedom House visualizations let you compare political-rights and civil-liberties components over time; cross-checking both Freedom House and HFI (and other indices) helps identify whether U.S. weakness is concentrated in a subdomain (e.g., civil liberties) or visible across measures [10] [5] [3].
6. What to watch next and limitations of current reporting
The 2025 Freedom House data and Visual Capitalist’s summary make clear the U.S. lost relative standing among democracies, but available sources do not list the precise numeric U.S. total and sub-scores in this packet of search results — you must consult the Freedom House country page or the All_data_FIW spreadsheet for those exact numbers [2] [4]. Also note methodological debates: Wikipedia’s coverage flags critiques about alignment with U.S. policy and potential biases, so comparisons should acknowledge that different freedom indices may produce different rank orders [8]. For policy or academic work, cite the original Freedom House tables and consider triangulating with the Human Freedom Index and Our World in Data extracts [2] [10] [3].
If you want, I can pull the exact 2025 numeric Freedom House scores for the United States and a chosen set of peer democracies directly from the Freedom House data file or the Our World in Data processed files cited above [4] [3].