Providus: low turnout among voters registered abroad is dragging down overall election participation

Latvian think tank Providus has released an analysis titled "Three Latvias at the ballot box: growing, shrinking and departed," examining how voter turnout in Saeima elections has been changing over time. The authors divide voters into three groups: those whose numbers are growing, those whose numbers are shrinking, and those who have moved abroad.

A growing group of voters abroad

One of the analysis's key findings is that the number of Latvian voters registered abroad keeps rising. At the same time, turnout within this group is considerably lower than among voters living in Latvia. According to Providus, the combination of a growing number of overseas-registered voters and their weak participation is increasingly pulling down the overall turnout percentage that is typically reported and treated as the headline indicator.

Call for separate reporting

To give the public and researchers a clearer picture of how voter engagement is actually evolving, Providus suggests that election authorities should, going forward, report turnout figures for voters in Latvia and voters abroad separately throughout election day. Currently the two figures are combined into a single overall number, which the think tank argues obscures the real situation within each group and can create a misleading impression of whether participation is rising or falling overall.