The elections for the EU Parliament are the world's second-largest exercise in democracy after India's general election. Around 450 million EU citizens will be called upon to vote for the European Parliament from June 6-9. Germany fields 96 of the 720 EU lawmakers.
Campaigners have been out and about for weeks, but many eligible voters show little interest: Four out of ten say they are not planning to cast their ballot on June 9.
This is according to the latest ARD-Deutschlandtrend survey by pollster infratest-dimap which surveyed 1515 eligible voters aged 16 and over, between May 27 and 29.
They compared the results to those of the previous EU election in 2019. Back then, voter turnout in Germany was just over 61% — well below the 76% turnout in the last general election in 2021.
As things stand, the center-right bloc of Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) has a good chance of once again coming out on top. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrat Party (SPD), the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the environmentalist Green Party, which form Germany's ruling federal coalition government, are all set to fall behind their........