The main characteristics of the elections of 13th October 1985 seem to be the following. The turnout, as appears from the number of laid down ballot papers in relation to the number of registered voters, is slightly declining compared with 1981. It indeed amounted to 93.59 % against 94.56 % four years before. This rate of participation averages those of previous elections. The number of blank and spoilt ballot papers is rising very slightly. It totalled 7.45 % for the House of Representatives, against 7.37 % in 1981. This is again an average percentage compared with the previous general elections. It is considerably lower than the number of blank and spoilt ballot papers at the European elections of both 1979 and 1984. The extent of the shifts in votes is much lower than in 1981 and also averages those of the last year's elections. The votes are moving in a very similar way in the three regions of the country, although with one notable exception: the loss suffered by the PVV in Flanders. Apart from that, the Christian Democrats are registering a gain in the northern and southern parts of the country as well as in Brussels as far as the CVP is concerned; the extent of the Socialist advance is the same in the three regions; the loss suffered by the nationalist parties is general and the «green» lists are reinforcing their breakthrough everywhere. The parties of the outgoing coalition are improving their result, which very seldom happens at Belgian elections: Christian Democrats and Liberals are indeed progressing by 2.26 %. Another noteworthy element, however, is the fact that the ahead movement of the main oppositionparties is even more important than the majority's as the Socialists obtained 3.25 % more of the valid votes. Of course this double success took place at the expense of the nationalist parties, the Communists and some smaller lists. The shift in seats does not exactly reflect the shift in votes, because of a different distribution of the seats between the provinces, on the one hand, due to the variations in the number of inhabitants, and because of the concentration on certain lists of the allocation of the last seat, on the other.