Having read The Tiger That Isn't, I never trust statistics of any kind.

So let's examine the voter turnout statistic being paraded around from yesterday evening, from the moment the polls closed. Major news outlets put it at 48% percent, which has huge political implications - nearly half the voters didn't bother to go to the polling station to cast their vote. Of course, this will be interpreted according to the needs of the parties/news station affiliations.

How did this number appear? The official source, Ministry of Interior gives (greek link):

• Registered 9,994,849
• Voted 52.63 %

Doing the math, 5,260,289 people voted.

Immediately, one thing jumps out: almost 10 million registered voters! The ballpark figure for the population of Greece is "around 10 million", so it would appear there are no under-18s in Greece any more. Let's get a more accurate number.

Directly from the National Statistical Service, the 2001 census puts the population of Greece at 10,964,020. However, this includes non-citizens, who can't cast a ballot. Drilling down a bit more, this pdf (in greek) gives us the breakdown of people by nationality and age.

So, Greek citizens of all ages: 10,171,906. We also have 490,965 children aged 0-4, 502,291 aged 5-9, 540,553 aged 10-14 and 666,539 aged 15-19. Given that a citizen has the right to vote when he is 18 years old, and from this pdf (in greek) we see that the breakdown of ages in the 15-19 group is pretty much constant, we can say that the 15-17 age group is roughly 333,000. This gives us a total of roughly 1,850,000 children that can't vote, putting the voting population at 8,320,000.

How does that change the turnout? From 52.63 % it now becomes 63.22 %, meaning that the absent percentage is at 36.78%, much less impressive. In absolute numbers, 6.3 million voters turned up in the 2004 EUP elections, versus 5.2 million in the 2009 ones. So indeed the absentees increased, but from that fact to huge headlines about how 1 in 2 doesn't care/trust the politicians and the political system is a huge leap of statistical blundering. I recommend reading The Tiger That Isn't, it provides a very useful guide about how to challenge statistics that are usually an attempt to misguide.

So to sum up, the actual voter turnout was 63.22%, two thirds of the voting population do care enough to go to vote on a very hot day instead of lying down on a beach recliner. May I ask again why we don't vote by mail/absentee ballot? Lots of other countries do it, so presumably there's a way to solve the logistic problems. In addition, why is it a tradition to hold elections on Sundays in Greece? Weekends are for resting, not for dragging yourself to a voting station. Give people some time off on a Wednesday, make them vote on their place of residence (instead of the municipality they are registered at, which for some idiotic IMO reason can be different). Remove the obstacles.

Of course, after I finish this post, I find this article (greek) that pretty much states the same thing. So there you go.