The 2024 European Parliament election took place June 6-9, 2024, with hundreds of millions of Europeans from the 27 countries of the European Union electing 720 members of the European Parliament. This was the first election after Brexit and without the UK, and it had an impact on the Internet. In this post, we will review some of the Internet traffic trends observed during the election days, as well as providing insight into cyberattack activity.
Elections matter, and as we have mentioned before (1, 2), 2024 is considered “the year of elections”, with voters going to the polls in at least 60 countries, as well as the 27 EU member states. That’s why we’re publishing a regularly updated election report on Cloudflare Radar. We’ve already included our analysis of recent elections in South Africa, India, Iceland, and Mexico, and provided a policy view on the EU elections.
The European Parliament election coincided with several other national or local elections in European Union member states, leading to direct consequences. For example, in Belgium, the prime minister announced his resignation, resulting in a drop in Internet traffic during the speech followed by a clear increase after the speech was over. In France, we saw a similar pattern with the announcement of legislative snap elections.
From analyzing patterns seen during previous elections in France and Brazil, we know that Internet traffic often decreases during voting hours, though not as significantly as during other major events like national holidays. This usual drop is typically followed by an increase in traffic as election results are announced.
Let’s start with a wider picture of the 2024 European Parliament election, focusing on the time of the biggest drop in Internet HTTP requests during the election days as compared to the previous week. Note that there were some national or local elections taking place at the same time, and European Union elections are known to have low turnout compared to national and local ones.
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Drops greater than 10% were observed only in the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Cyprus, Belgium, Estonia, and Croatia. The table below includes the percentage that traffic dropped and the specific time during the election day it occurred. In countries with more than one election day, we considered the time and day of the biggest drop.
Countries
Elections day(s)
Local time
Drop in traffic %
Czech Republic
June 7 – 8
June 8, 14:30
-20%
Luxembourg
June 9
12:45
-18%
Slovakia
June 8
15:45; 19:00
-16%
Cyprus
June 9
10:00
-16%
Belgium
June 9
11:45
-14%
Estonia
June 7-9
June 9, 9:00
-13%
Croatia
June 9
18:00
-12%
Poland
June 9
18:00
-10%
Netherlands
June 6
10:15
-10%
Germany
June 9
13:45
-10%
Ireland
June 7
7:15
-9%
Finland
June 9
9:00
-9%
Portugal
June 9
15:45
-9%
Malta
June 8
12:15
-9%
Latvia
June 8
08:30, 16:15
-9%
Slovenia
June 9
18:00
-8%
Hungary
June 9
6:00
-8%
Austria
June 9
12:30
-7%
Italy
June 8 – 9
June 9, 16:00
-6%
France
June 9
13:30
-6%
Bulgaria
June 9
19:45
-5%
Greece
June 9
8:00
-5%
Spain
June 9
13:00
-4%
Lithuania
June 9
8:00
-3%
Romania
June 9
9:45
-1%
Denmark
June 9
–
–
Sweden
June 9
–
–
The data in the list above shows that Central European countries had the highest drop in Internet traffic, particularly the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Eastern Europe saw significant drops in Estonia and Poland. Southern Europe had consistent moderate drops across multiple countries, with Cyprus and Croatia showing higher losses. Northern Europe showed minimal to no traffic drop in Scandinavian countries, with Finland and Ireland experiencing moderate declines.
Looking at the specific (local) times of day during voting periods on election days, morning drops (06:00 – 10:00) were more common in Northern and Eastern Europe. Late morning to early afternoon drops (10:15 – 14:30) were predominantly observed in Western and Central Europe. Late afternoon drops (15:45 – 19:45) were more common in Central and Southern Europe.
Impact of notable announcements in Belgium and France
There’s more to say when we look at specific country trends. The 27 members of the European Union bring diversity in habits, languages, and cultures. That also impacted traffic, and this election in particular had a national impact in some of the countries.
In Belgium, national and regional elections took place on the same day, June 9. After polling stations closed at 16:00 local time (14:00 UTC), HTTP requests followed the typical pattern of increasing, peaking at 21:15 local time (19:15 UTC), with 7% more requests than the previous week. This trend was interrupted by Prime Minister Alexander De Croo’s speech at around 22:00 local time (20:00 UTC), admitting defeat in the national elections. This pattern is typical when important announcements are broadcast on TV, impacting Internet traffic.
How about France? President Emmanuel Macron announced at around 21:00 local time (19:00 UTC) that he would dissolve the national parliament for a snap legislative election. This followed the EU elections that gave a victory to his rival Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Parliament vote. At the time of his speech, requests dropped 6% compared to the previous week, and increased right after Macron’s speech, peaking at 22:15 local time (20:15 UTC) with a 6% increase.
After voting ends, traffic increases
It was not only Belgium and France that had typical increases in HTTP requests at night when the first projections and results started to be announced. The same happened in the Netherlands, the first European country to enter the 2024 European Parliament election, on Thursday, June 6.— We have previously written about report, that we’re updating as elections take place throughout the year.
Source:: CloudFlare