>> I love the talk of tiny turnouts in EP elections. I'm not disputing it,
>> but here in the states our last *national* parliamentary election - the
>> 2006 off-year election, which determined the entire House of
>> Representatives and one third of the Senate - had lower turnout: 40%
>>
>
> And the point is...?
>
> SA seems to be arguing that because elections in the US -- which
> are, of course, highly significant by definition -- have low turnout,
> then low turnout must not be a good reason to take the recent EP
> elections with a grain of salt.
>
Um, no. The other way around: I'm saying things are even worse in the US than they are in Europe, turnout-wise. E.g., the BBC coverage of the EP elections made a big deal of the low turnout as evidence that Europeans couldn't care less about the EP, yet I don't recall quite the same emphasis placed on even lower turnout in the 2006 US vote.
SA