[Cal.]

I've heard this said on and off for years, pretty much since the final of Big Brother 5. Apparently more people voted in the final (not for Nadia to win, but for the 4 in the final) than in the European Parliament election which happened at the same time. Is there any truth to this?

[MTVN]

Wiki on the 2004 European elections says that 17,028,947 votes were cast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...ted_Kingdom%29

This article says 6,363,325 votes were cast in the BB5 final: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4586995.stm

So it'd seem not

That BBC article is making a slightly different comparison between the BB5 final and the general election though, and looking at just 18-34 year olds it says:

Overall, that translates into 5,696,907 votes cast by 18 to 34-year-olds on 5 May [in the general election].

If one assumes all the viewers of the Big Brother final are aged 18-34, the programme was, on the face of it, slightly more popular than the general election among young voters.

Though it then points out that lots of people voted more than once and so on

All in all a fairly pointless study really