Back To The Books

Things have gone a bit off track in the last couple of days as the people I’ve been meeting have talked about communications solutions to the problem of turnout rather than analysing the problem itself – if it is a problem that is.

Anyway, it was back to the books today for a bit more background reading. I’ve read odd chapters from all of the books that are listed in the ‘Reading – Current Research’ section on the right hand column. Most of it follows on, or fits in with, the review of the Politics UK book that I posted last Sunday and Monday.

Strangely in the stuff I read today there was no much about people being turned off by politics as such. Rather there seemed to be a greater emphasis on structural issues such as declining class differences and party identification which has resulted in ideological differences between parties becoming more difficult to identify.

The low turn outs of 2001 and 2005 seem generally to have been assigned to a belief that the result was a foregone conclusion in the first case and a desire to punish Labour but without any corresponding desire to elect the Conservatives in the centre.

The statistical analyses seem to indicate that class, education and gender have nothing to do with whether a person votes or not. The most significant factor appears to be age (the younger you are, the less likely to vote). But again this is not an issue of political apathy. Most young people it seems are very concerned about issues. We come back to the belief in the efficacy of the vote, especially in FPTP and to other factors which came up today for the first time. Young people who have moved away from home and have just started renting places are much more likely not to have registered in their new locality.

This notion of how well established a community is and the affect on turnout is of direct significance to inner city areas. These are the areas with the greatest tendency to have mobile populations. When elections come round, many people on the register have moved on and the new arrivals aren’t listed. No wonder official turn out is low.

Rather than turn out being a communications problem, it might just be a symptom of a more mobile, more aware public. Scrapping FPTP to make more votes count would note only encourage more people to turn out, it would also encourage parties to campaign in all constituencies, rather than just targeting the marginal seats. A closer contest in future elections and perhaps the opening up of an ideological gap between the parties however unlikely this may be in an era where most people are firmly in the centre ground of politics, could it is argued, quickly see a return to high turn outs.

Pursuing new communications strategies with the aim of raising voter turnout could very well prove to be a waste of time and effort.