Get to know some facts about abstention in the elections to the European Parliament

2019 was a year of record abstention

In 2019, Portugal saw the electoral participation numbers drop to record lows. Only 30.75% of the over 10.7 million registered voters cast their ballots.

This was a record that confirmed the decreasing trend of the adhesion of Portuguese voters to the elections to the European Parliament, as a new abstention record had already been broken in 2014, with 66.33% of the voters failing to answer the call to the polls.

With an abstention of 69.25% in 2019, Portugal went against the European trend of greater adhesion to the election of MEPs and had the third worst record in the European Union in terms of participation, only ahead of Slovakia and Croatia.

Despite the low adhesion in 2019, the number of voters in that election, in absolute terms, rose by around 30 thousand when compared to the 2014 polls.

Adhesion to the EU motivated going to the polls

The best Portuguese results in terms of participation in European elections still date back to the 20th century, shortly after Portugal joined the European Community. 

In the 1987 European elections, one year after Portugal joined the then European Economic Community, 72.42% of the voters went to the polls to choose Portugal's representatives to the European Parliament, putting the abstention at 27.8%.

This was a level of abstention that Portugal has not recorded again. Two years later, in 1989, abstention shot up to 48.9% and has not dropped again.

Six out of ten voters fail to vote in European elections

In 1994, Portugal reached 64% abstention, the worst result of the last century, and has not managed to drop below the 60% barrier in all subsequent elections.

In 1999, abstention in European elections dropped to 60.07%, and remained relatively stable until 2009.

In 2004, 36.7% of the voters went to the polls (abstention of 61.4%) and five years later, in 2009, abstention rose to 63.3%.

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