For the first time since the 1990s, voter turnout in Bosnia and Herzegovina has fallen below 50 percent, with around 220,000 fewer citizens casting their ballots compared to the previous election cycle.
According to available election data, 41.48 percent of registered voters participated in this year’s elections, compared with 51.45 percent four years ago. The decline continues a trend of falling turnout observed across several election cycles, but the latest decrease is particularly pronounced.
Citizens and analysts cite several possible reasons, including political apathy, dissatisfaction with the available political choices, mistrust in institutions and the political process, as well as the continued departure of the population from the country.
The Under Scrutiny Coalition, however, believes that part of the decline may also be connected to changes introduced to the electoral process and the reduction of opportunities for previously documented forms of electoral abuse.
Dario Jovanović of the Under Scrutiny Coalition said that the approximately 220,000-voter decrease should not be interpreted exclusively as an increase in voter abstention.
“Part of this is a big problem that happened before, that is, the abuse of ballots in such a way that they voted in the name of another person, dead or absent, and that they voted more than once. This has been proven repeatedly in several election cycles, that between 20 and 50% of signatures were falsified,” Jovanović said.
According to the coalition’s interpretation, some of the turnout recorded in previous elections may have included ballots associated with irregularities, meaning that the figures did not necessarily correspond entirely to the number of citizens who actually went to polling stations.
Sociologist Esad Bajtal similarly pointed to the high level of abstention, arguing that citizens are increasingly questioning the extent to which their individual votes influence election results.
“We have always seen abstention rates ranging from 40 to 60 percent. Yesterday, that figure hit the 60 percent mark – the upper limit – because people realize that it is not their votes that determine the election result, but rather electoral engineering,” Bajtal said.
Whether the latest decline is primarily the result of political apathy, mistrust, demographic changes or tighter safeguards against electoral irregularities, the figures show that a majority of registered voters did not participate in this year’s elections.
The low turnout therefore raises broader questions not only about citizens’ willingness to participate in elections, but also about public confidence in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s electoral and political system.
