The non-voter time bomb
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© Nogueira Lopes | Divergente
Increasing numbers of Europeans choose not to vote: a quarter don’t participate in any type of election and nearly half don’t vote for representatives of the European Parliament. The non-voter time bomb is a data-driven journalism feature that profiles voter abstention across the European Union (EU) over the last 50 years and analyses it according to different demographic and socioeconomic indicators for each of the 27 member states. Do people vote less in countries with higher levels of inequality? Do university studies influence people’s voting record? Is abstention lower in places where salaries are higher? These are some of the questions this feature answers.
Main findings:
- Regarding EU parliament elections:
- Overall, the lowest voter turnout is seen in the European elections. In Northern Europe, all countries have abstention rates over 45%, while in Southern Europe, more than half of the countries have an abstention rate lower than 45%. In most EU countries, over half the electorate do not vote.
- The lower the average salary in a country, the greater the rate of abstention. Abstention is higher in countries where a greater proportion of the population work in the industrial sector.
- The Netherlands is the only one of the EEC founding countries with an abstention rate of over 50%.
- Regarding national elections:
- Europeans vote more in elections for their heads of government than in any other election. Still, more than 30% of Europeans chose not to vote in the most recent head of government elections.
- Voter turnout is lower in countries with higher levels of inequality and in countries where a greater proportion of the population work in agriculture and fishing. It is higher in countries where the average salary is higher and where a greater proportion of the population work in the services sector.
- Two times fewer people vote in countries from Eastern Europe than from Central Europe. In Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Lithuania, more than half the electorate chose not to vote in the most recent elections for the head of government.
- Regarding local elections:
- France was the country with the highest rate of abstention in the most recent local elections: six in every ten French people didn’t vote. More than 60% of voters in Czechia, Latvia and France didn’t vote in the most recent local elections.
- Voter turnout is lower in countries where a greater proportion of the population work in the industrial sector and higher in countries where a greater proportion of the population work in the services sector. The lower the average salary, the greater the rate of abstention.
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The data unit
Luciana Maruta (Divergente, coordinator) is a journalist working as an investigative reporter at Divergente, a digital magazine of narrative journalism focused on immersive multimedia features.
