A story in The Economist (2004), apocryphal or not, encapsulates the attitude of the EU’s electorate towards the 2004 EP elections. A British MEP candidate approached a shopper to elicit her support, the woman stood as close as she could to the hapless would-be MEP and shouted ‘Boring!’ This was the message the recently enlarged EU’s voters sent to both national and EU leaders, with particular venom in the ten new member states (NMS).1 The question for both sets of political elite is how could the triumph of enlargement so quickly degenerate into the turnout disaster of the EP elections?
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© 2005 Mark D. Baimbridge
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Baimbridge, M.D. (2005). EUphoria to Apathy: EP Turnout in the New Member States. In: Lodge, J. (eds) The 2004 Elections to the European Parliament. EU Election Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523821_5
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