Well over a billion registered voters throughout the Asia-Pacific area will go to the polls in a slew of elections in 2024, deciding the area’s financial and diplomatic trajectory for years to come back.

Residents of Taiwan will face a defining moment in Jan. 13’s presidential election, the outcomes of which can have an enormous bearing on how the small self-ruled island interacts with the superpower that claims it — China. But that is only one pivotal common election on a calendar that features the most important democracies in South and Southeast Asia, together with legislative polls from the Maldives to Mongolia.