Can Information Increase Turnout in the European Parliament Elections? The perks of political conversation for the uninterested

Abstract

Direct elections to the European Parliament have been held since 1979 and turnout has steadily decreased with each election. The turnout rates vary considerably between member states, but the overall trend is diminishing participation from the citizens of Europe. It is well established that politically interested citizens vote in larger numbers, but what can influence the not so politically interested to actually turn out to vote? The aim of this thesis is to study if exposure to more information about the European Union (EU) and the European Parliament can make politically uninterested citizens more likely to vote in the European elections, and to compare different sources of information. The hypotheses are tested using logistic regression and data from the European Election Survey 2014. The results show that uninterested individuals who gained more information in the last weeks before the election were more likely to vote, even when controlling for several common determinants for turnout. The study also comes to the conclusion that the information source that has the strongest effect on turnout is personal conversations, which indicates that citizens are more influenced by what their friends and family members say than by what they see on television or read in the newspapers.