The day before the European elections took place, Ukip leader Nigel Farage forecast a “record turnout” at the polls.

This would have meant more than 38.5% of UK electors casting a ballot, breaking the previous record for a turnout set at the European elections in 2004.

Well, this didn’t happen.

Turnout did not hit record levels. It didn’t even go up.

Turnout was down – down to second-lowest level of the last 25 years:

That figure of 34.2% is even more pathetic when considering overall turnout across the whole of the European Union was 43.1%, an improvement on 2009 (though by only 0.1%).

As various people have observed on Twitter today, the true “earthquake” of Thursday’s European elections was not how many people voted for Ukip, but how many people voted for nobody at all.