07/06/2009

Quick Prediction

As you may know, European elections are held in Germany today (as well as in many other nations). But if you don't, you could be forgiven - even if you spent the last four weeks in Germany. Based on this and the fact that at my local polling station, 15 (fifteen) people had voted between ten and eleven o'clock (despite the decent weather), I'm willing to make a prediction - or rather, two versions of the same prediction:

Weak claim: Today's elections will set a new record low in participation.

Strong claim: Participation will be below 40%.

Just to clarify: I actually think the strong claim is true. Results tonight.

Update 19:54: According to the most recent estimates I've seen, the weak claim seems to be correct, the strong claim wrong.

Update 09-06-09: Wrong on both counts. See second comment, though.

2 comments:

Political Scientist said...

British Euro-electrions were on Thursday, but in some parts of the country they coincided with our local government elections. I expect this, together with the current UK political shennanigans, led to increased turnout over here.

LemmusLemmus said...

Stupid me: Same problem here. Local elections were also held in seven Länders, covering about a third of the electorate. Otherwise I would have been completely right, of course!

If I can get myself interested enough I'll go and dig up the data and try to estimate what the participation rate would have been otherwise. Doubt it, though.