Why vote at an election with no apparent purpose? Voter turnout at elections to the European Parliament

Abstract:

Elections to the European Parliament famously fail to excite the interest of voters. The result is low turnout at these elections, particularly in some post-communist EU member states.

In this publication, Mark Franklin, a prominent scholar in the area of elections to the European Parliament and director of several European Election Studies, draws from his rich experience and argues that low turnout can be blamed on the low salience of elections at which little is at stake. The analysis gives several recommendations on how to make European elections work better.