The general elections of november 1981 in Belgium showed the second most important change in party-vote since 1945. The non-voting is in the three regions slightly superior to the nonvoting at the 1978 elections, but considerably lower than the non-voting for the European Parliament. In contrast with the results of the public opinion polls, the number of blank and spoilt ballot papers shows a rather sharp decline compared with 1978. For the country taken as a whole, these votes totalled about 5 % less than at the time of the European election. The election trends are very much alike in the three regions of the country: a considerable loss by the Christian Democrats, a quasi status quo for the Socialists, a gain by the Liberals and the UDRT-RAD (Democratic Union for Respect of Work), a Communist loss, a very heavy defeat by the French-speaking nationalist parties contrasting with the ahead movement of the Volksunie (Flemish federalists), this being the only «reversed» trend according to the regions, and at last a significant breakthrough of the «green» lists. The parties of the outgoing coalition have been «punished» by the electorate; together they lost 10.11 % of the valid votes. The loss, however, has been suffered almost entirely by the Christian Democrats.