For years, voter turnout is shrinking at all political levels. The numbers world-wide and for various pan-European decision-making levels in particular are alarming. Although we know much about why citizens cast their vote or do not participate in elections, it is the social imbalance of low voter turnout across the European Union for national and European elections which has attracted only scarce scholarly attention so far. This paper offers a first pan-European research design analyzing the turnout of primary (national parliamentary) and secondary elections (European, regional and municipal elections) of various European Member States over time. Following the findings by Hajnal und Trounstine (2005) that social imbalances of low voter turnout can be best analysed at the city neighbourhood-level, we conduct a small-scale analysis of voter turnout in three cities for five European countries (Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Slovenia and Sweden) representing different electoral systems. By focusing on voters at city-level we find that lower turnout in national, regional and European parliamentary elections leads to substantial reductions in the representation of particular voter subsets. For unemployed, less educated young European citizens primary and secondary elections are more important barriers to representation.
