Turnout in European parliament elections: towards a European-centred model

Abstract

With the 2004 European Parliament elections approaching, it is useful to consider what affects voting in these elections. This paper addresses the puzzle of declining turnout in European Parliament elections. After reviewing the influential “second order elections” explanation emphasizing domestic influences on turnout, especially Mark Franklin’s recent study stressing the importance of electoral salience factors, we develop a revised model to incorporate EU as well as domestic variables. Our model indicates that EU influences, at least on the aggregate level, may have more influence on EP elections than previously reported. Tests of our model for the first five EP elections, 1979 through 1999, find that it provides an alternative explanation of turnout similar in power to Franklin’s model. Because of changes in membership of the EU, our alternative model may be preferable for explaining future turnout variation in EU elections.