Press Release

International IDEA launches
Global Report on Voter Turnout

Stockholm, 2 July 1997 -- Seven unlikely bedfellows, Malta, the Seychelles, Albania, Uruguay, Angola, Indonesia and Iceland, top the league table of voter turnout in the 1990s, dispelling the notion that high political participation is solely the property of established Western democracies.

At the bottom of the list Mali, Djibouti, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Egypt, Guatemala and Colombia have had less than 32% of their population voting in the 1990s, but the United States (44%) and Switzerland (38%) slip into the bottom 25 places of the league table.

These are some of the findings from Voter Turnout from 1945 to 1997: A Global Report on Political Participation which was launched today by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA).

The report, based on election results from 1945 up to the British general election on 1 May 1997, includes an analysis of statistics from more than 1,400 parliamentary and presidential elections in 171 countries.

Other findings of the report are:

• Voter turnout has risen steadily around the world since 1945;

• The wealth of a region does not automatically imply a higher voter turnout in that region;

• Illiteracy does not translate directly into low turnout;

• Contrary to what is considered conventional wisdom, the average turnout rate in second and third generation elections was actually higher than for first elections;

• High voter turnout does not guarantee political stability; and conversely,

• Low voter turnout does not mean that there is political instability.

The global report contains graphs, charts and tables analysing the data, and includes a 40-page database with all of the raw statistics. Professor Richard Rose, a member of the British Academy and a world renown expert on elections, has written an essay which analyses the data and puts it into an historical perspective.

"In this report we have chosen to focus on one dimension of political participation, namely voter turnout," says Bengt Säve-Söderbergh, Secretary-General of International IDEA. "Elections are not to be equalled to democracy, but they are without doubt one very important and indispensable element. To our knowledge this is the most comprehensive global report on voter turnout that has been published to date," he says.

The report looks at various turnout statistics and includes a number of league tables on average voter turnout between 1945 and 1997, regional comparison tables and a ranking of voter turnout in the 1990s.

The report also comes with a colour-coded map of voter turnout results from the most recent national elections in 171 countries, so at a glance it is possible to see that Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan, the United States, Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Niger and Switzerland are in the same (30 - 39.9%) category concerning the number of eligible citizens who voted in the most recent national election.

The International IDEA database is based on Voting Age Population, which includes all of those citizens over the legal voting age, as the basis of our turnout percentages rather than the reported registration rate.

The global report, a press summary and correlating graphics are available from International IDEA’s headquarters.