Older men top vote for Greece’s new MEPs, study finds
The majority of Greek voters who turned up for the European Parliament elections last Sunday showed a preference for male candidates over the age of 50, who have a background as journalists and a university degree, an analysis of the results has revealed.
The findings were published by the Athens-based Center for Liberal Studies, an independent, not-for-profit organization, which studied the CVs and career paths of all 1,168 candidates who ran for a seat as MEP.
More specifically, it found that 71% of Greece’s 21 newly elected MEPs are men, even though they constituted 58% of the nominees. Women accounted for 29% of the vote but made up 42% of the ballots. Moreover, the average age of those elected came to 54.4 years old, which is higher than the mean age of all the candidates together.
In terms of their educational backgrounds, 64.7% of Greece’s new MEPs have a university degree, 17.6% have a master’s and another 17.6% hold a doctorate.
Their professional backgrounds are also interesting, as 24% of the elected candidates are journalists, even though they represented just 7.48% of the total nominees. The next most popular groups were lawyers (14%) and academics (10%).
Experience also played a part, as 66.7% of the Euro MPs who served in the 2019-2024 term were re-elected for another five years. Moreover, 45% of the new MEPs have been elected before in local, national or European elections and 40% have held some kind of political office prior to running.
Another interesting finding made by the Center for Liberal Studies, using data from Inside Story, is that the MEPs who served in 2019-2024 and were re-elected on Sunday were less active during their previous five-year term in Strasbourg than their fellow Greek MEPs who were not re-elected.
Specifically, they acted as rapporteurs – meaning they presented a legislative proposal – 0.4 times on average, against 1.5 times for those who won’t serve again. They also acted as shadow rapporteurs – responsible for following the progress of legislation at the committee level – 6.3 times against the 11.4 of those who are not going back to Strasbourg.
