EU Elections

EUOBSERVER
Political scientists call European Parliament
elections ‘second-order elections’.
This means that they are less important
to voters than elections that determine
the national government (domestic parliament
or an executive presidency), and
therefore turnout is lower and the share
of the vote for extreme and protest options
is higher. The increase in the power
of the European Parliament and innovations
such as the ‘Spitzenkandidat’ [lead
candidate] mandate for president of the
Commission in 2014 and 2019 have not
altered the general voter perception of EP
elections as being secondary to national
elections. There are occasional exceptions
– turnout in Greece in the May 2019
European Parliament election was higher
(58.7 percent) than in the July 2019 parliamentary
general election (57.8 percent).
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Turnout by year
Final results
1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009 2014 2019
Source: European Parliament in collaboration with Kantar
1994) fell from 62 percent in 1979 to 47.8
percent in 2014 — but rebounded somewhat
in 2019 to 52.6 per cent.
The other reason for lower turnout in
recent elections has been that the EU average
is reduced by low turnout in many
of the states that joined in 2004 and after,
a phenomenon that affects national
elections as well as those for the European
Parliament. There was a 20-point gap
in turnout in 2014 between the first 15
members and the 13 post-2004 accession
states.
Even though many voters in these countries
have relatively high trust for European
(compared to national) institutions,
the general lack of faith in politics leads
to lower participation. The turnout gap
narrowed dramatically in the 2019 election;
the rise in turnout in the post-2004
joiners, particularly in the largest two of
them, Poland and Romania, was an important
contributor to the overall rise in
turnout in the EU.
Turnout is measured simply as the number
of people voting divided by the number
of people entitled to vote. While the
vote count precisely reflects the number
of people participating in the election,
the figure for the registered electorate
tends to be a lot vaguer, and its accuracy
varies between member states. Turnout
might look artificially low in some countries
because the electorate is swollen
by the names of people who are dead or
have moved, and people who are on the
register twice.
Countries with large populations working
overseas, such as Romania, Bulgaria
and Poland are particularly affected.
Conversely, the electoral register in
countries with large resident populations
from other EU states, such as Luxembourg
and Belgium, often misses out
many people who are legally entitled to
claim a vote for the European Parliament.
The gap in participation as a share
of those eligible to vote between the top
and bottom countries may therefore be
smaller than the published turnout figures
suggest.
Belgium: the ‘best’
Election after election, Belgium has been
the champion member state for participation,
with an average turnout of 90.6
percent since 1979. To some extent, this
may reflect Brussels hosting (most) European
institutions and awareness of
its ideas, but a closer look at the context
shows other factors at work. Voting is
compulsory in Belgium, and although
prosecutions for failing to do so are now
rare, participation has remained very
high. Turnout in Belgium has also been
supported in the elections of 2014 and
2019, and will be in 2024, by concurrent
federal and regional general elections.
In 2024 the European franchise, but not
the federal, will extend to 16 and 17-yearolds,
for the first time.