The non-voter time bomb by DIVERGENTE

At the beginning of 2021, Marine Le Pen was a year away from coming second in the presidential elections in France, Jair Bolsonaro was the President of Brazil, Donald Trump had completed his four year term as President of the United States of America, Hungary had been living under Viktor Orban’s authoritarianism for over a decade and Portugal recorded the highest abstention rate in an national election since the Revolution on 25 April 1974—60.7% in the 2021 presidential elections.

Abstention and varying shades of populism were taking hold of the political scene across Europe and the world. And increasing numbers of Europeans choose not to vote: a quarter don’t participate in any type of election and nearly half don’t vote in the ones for the European Parliament.

This feature is a piece of groundbreaking data-driven investigative journalism offering a visual breakdown of voter abstention across the European Union (EU) over the last 50 years and correlated against inequality, unemployment and schooling data in the last years of election. And also a visual and narrative portray about the portuguese non-voters living and/or working in places with an increasingly abstention rate.

We examined the shifting voting patterns of 351 million electors, 27 countries, 85,000 parishes in 697 electoral events between 1974 and 2023, trying to found out: Which countries and parishes across the EU have the highest abstention levels? Do people vote less where inequality is higher? Do lower salaries mean lower voter turnout?

In Portugal, we visited from north to south, including one of the island, ten parishes with the lowest voter turnout in Portugal. A narrative portrait of these communities, with a strong visual component crossing photography with people's testimonies, trying to find out why the Portuguese are increasingly distancing themselves from politics and nearly half don’t vote in any type of election. Is democracy at risk when citizens waive their right to decide?

The non-voter time bomb is a data-driven feature coordinated by DIVERGENTE, with methodological support and editing from DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte researchers. It is being undertaken with the European Data Journalism Network and with collaboration of Are We Europe (Belgium), Átlátszó (Hungary), Delfi Meedia (Estonia), Denník N (Slovakia), Deutsche Welle (Germany), El Confidencial (Spain), EUrologus (Hungary), II Sole 24 Ore (Italy), iMEdD (Greece), NARA (Lithuania), Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (Croatia), Pod črto (Slovenia), PressOne (Romania), Rue89 Strasbourg (France) e Voxeurop (Belgium).