12 – Turnout at EP elections

The chart below shows the trajectory of turnout at the nine European Parliament elections held to date, tracking both individual Member States (grey dots) and the total for the EU as a whole (blue dots/line). Successive elections saw turnout fall until 2019. The most recent election resulted in an 8.3 percentage point increase in turnout, which at 50.6 per cent, represented the first time since 1994 that more than half the adult population had turned out to vote. A similar downward trend over time is seen in the US mid-term elections, where the presidency is not at stake, again with a sharp upturn in the most recent (2018) election. Such a downward trend can also be observed in national elections over the same period, although from a higher baseline, given that governments are also being elected in such contests.