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 ^[1]
– 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 ^[2] 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 ^[3] 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 ^[4]

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 ^[5] (which always makes good reading).

– The EU Profiler http://www.euprofiler.eu/ ^[6] a tool that asks you questions and then aligns you with the political groupings.
– Predict http://www.predict09.eu/default/en-us.aspx ^[7] aims to predict the outcome of the elections.
– EP vote http://www.epvote.eu/ ^[8] analyses how Parliament votes on various issues.
– Parliarama http://blog.parlorama.eu/fr/ ^[9] 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.