How is fucking Saudi Arabia not the darkest red unless you are blatantly giving them bonus points for being a western ally. SA is about as autocratic as you get.
"Just because it is a literal monarchy where no one votes doesn't mean they can't support Western Democratic Values ®" the person who made this map probably.
Because to them democracy is bourgeois democracy. Saudi Arabia let the bourgeois have some power so they have some « democratic » caracteristics according to this model.
It's nonsensical to measure ”democracy” as a number, but even if you don't believe the elections in China, Russia or Venezuela are entirely fair, they still have them. Logically, it makes no sense for those countries to even be compared to a country like Saudi Arabia that has no democratic institutions, but what makes this map even more absurd is actually having them below Saudi Arabia.
It’s because liberals’ understanding of democracy is “democracy = good”. They cannot comprehend that the enemy might also have elections and representatives that the people like and want, even if it goes against their values. If there were two choices, one town voting go reinstate chattel slavery and the other town criminalizing slavery without putting it to a vote, liberals would say the former is better because it’s democratic.