A quick look at voter turnout statistics available on http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge05/turnout05.htm soon revealed that I'm not going to have too much trouble finding a constituency in London with low participation in elections. In 2005, of the 38 constituencies throughout the country that had a turnout of less than 50 per cent, 8 were in London.
Also, all bar 1 of them were located in close proximity to each other. The constituencies (with their respective turnouts) were Poplar & Canning Town (45.82%), Tottenham (47.8%), Vauxhall (46.9%), Southwark North & Bermondsey (49.34%), Hackney North & Stoke Newington (49.57%), Hackney South & Shoreditch (49.73%) and West Ham (49.79%). Turnout overall in the eclection stood at 61.3%.
It would seem clear, therefore, that there is a specific problem with engagement in a definable area of London. The first task will be to establish why this is so, something on which I know there has already been a lot of reserach over the years. I will however be looking to give an overview of the conclusions of that research here in order to help set the context from which to go on and investigate whether new media technologies could be a viable tool for political communications to address this problem.
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