Pinnacle Insights
The European elections 2009 – bets are on
May 6, 2009 | Written by Andrew Manasseh
If you read the European press and blogs lately you get the impression that the voter turnout for the European elections in June 2009 is going to be at an all time low.
Turnout in 2004 was 48% – this time will it be higher or lower? I’m taking bets.
More power = less interest
The irony is that as the Parliament gets more power the interest of European voters has declined.
Voter turnout in the last election was just 48% and recent Eurobarometer polls suggest an even lower rate – perhaps as low at 25%. A third of those polled in Britain said they would definitely not vote and of those 70% said it was because they were not well informed by the media. But is it entirely down to the media?
Various commentators and bloggers suggest other factors including:
– A general sense of disengagement with EU politics. Election turnout has been declining in most European countries especially new member states that joined in 2004. Look at this blog Jon Worth Euro Blog
– The only increase in interest seems to be in protest parties who thrive on punishing unpopular governments – but these tend to come and go. I think this contributed to the Irish voted ‘no’ the Lisbon Treaty. Protest parties make a better case.
– European Parliament elections are ‘second order elections’ click here for an explanation Wikipedia Second-order_elections Like local or regional elections these are seen as less important than national election where there is greater familiarity with the issues that are being played out and of course the personalities of the candidates.
– Most people can’t name more than 2 MEPs, never mind the political groupings or what they stand for.
– The issues that affect the European electorate – recession, job security, their mortgages, safety of their bank savings aren’t in the realm of MEPs. In fact media coverage suggest the EU to be fairly powerless when is comes to the financial crunch.
– Of the recent successes of the European Parliament include the REACH directive and Services directives – most people don’t know what these mean or how these accomplishments affect their lives.
– According to Mark Mardell’s Blog markmardell/2009/04 most people don’t see how their vote changes things. It’s lobbyists and pressure groups that help change things in Brussels.
Communicating the elections
So, it seems that slick election campaigns and media coverage don’t necessarily affect voter turnout.
However, there may be a surprise increase in polling. According to a recent article in Euractiv
some parties are looking to innovative ways to communicate with voters – and are taking lesson from the impressive Obama grass roots campaign that built Facebook fan club with a million members.
Parties in Czech Republic are keying into the 250,000 young Facebook users and recent poll suggest that voter turnout their actually double from 25% in 2004 to 50%.
New media approaches
Young voters don’t seem to be wowed by traditional election campaigns. But there are some new Web 2.0 tools that may help to engage the Facebook generation.
Here are a few we found on Jon Worth’s EU Blog www.jonworth.eu (which always makes good reading).
– The EU Profiler http://www.euprofiler.eu/ a tool that asks you questions and then aligns you with the political groupings.
– Predict http://www.predict09.eu/default/en-us.aspx aims to predict the outcome of the elections.
– EP vote http://www.epvote.eu/ analyses how Parliament votes on various issues.
– Parliarama http://blog.parlorama.eu/fr/ maps attendance by MEPs and was obviously the most interesting because it has been closed down due to large number of complaints.
So, can the power of Web 2.0 save the elections?
Let me know what you think.
May 7th, 2009 at 00:46
I expect the turnout to be lower than last time, but higher than some of the apocalyptic expectations.
What is going on in the Web 1.5 (most is not really interactive and responsive 2.0) these days will probably the factor that catches the attention of some more voters which will weaken the downward trend of turnout rates (not only for the EP elections, but also for many national/regional/local elections), without reversing this trend.
May 8th, 2009 at 15:54
Disclosure: I work for the web team of the European Parliament.
Can the elections be saved? Bit of a radical way of putting it. At what point do elections “fail”? The European Parliament will be elected, that’s for sure, and it will exercise the (considerable) powers it has. The danger is really two-fold: (i) a lack of perceived legitimacy (but this won’t alter its legal legitimacy), and (ii) – perhaps worse – that it ends up unrepresentative on a small turnout (but this won’t affect its legal powers). Whence the twin notions “if you don’t decide someone else will” and “if you don’t vote, don’t complain”.
But can Web 2.0 tools do anything about it? There’s no doubt that there are hugely successful examples of political communication relying on Web 2.0. Just think Obama. These elections are a really interesting test case, not only for political communication, but also *institutional* communication using web 2.0. There’s a difference of course. It’s one thing to mobilise fellow believers in a cause behind a charismatic leader, it’s another to incite participation and engagement from a strictly neutral, non-partisan perspective. That’s why the ultimate turnout in the European elections really depends much more on what parties and politicians do than on what the institution itself might do.
Nevertheless, for the first time, an EU institution has gone big on Web 2.0. The elections are the prompt for this, but this is actually a long-term communications commitment. Meanwhile, the online part of the European Parliament’s election awareness campaign is taking in several platforms:
Special election website, with interactive debates, polls, etc. and a great interactive “Time Machine” (in “results” section): http://www.elections2009.eu
Facebook page (over 8000 fans and counting) with lively and interesting interaction: http://www.facebook.com/europeanparliament
MySpace profile, including several widgets, embedded slideshows, video, google map, etc.: http://www.myspace.com/europeanparliament
YouTube channel, including some rather unexpected videos: http://www.youtube.com/europeanparliament
Flickr, with well over 200 photos so far of the Parliament – the campaign, the leading figures, behind the scenes, news and atmosphere: http://www.flickr.com/photos/european_parliament
There is also a really nice little project starting (travelling YaBs), which hopes to draw on Web 2.0 memes, through a separate Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/YaBs
Finally, not just election related, the European Parliament web team talk about their job from a personal perspective via their blog: http://www.ep-webeditors.eu
Hope this is of interest.
regards
Steve