Choiceless & voiceless? » Research

Eluding nonvoters

Andreas — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:03:57 +0000

Political science continues to have tremendous trouble to capture the phenomenon of nonvoting – both Prof Roth and Dr de Nève stated and described this phenomenon clearly.

Nonvoters keep eluding political science | Photo by piccadillywilson on Flickr

Much of this dilemma is related to the tools of the trade: instruments of political polling work with samples of self-reported voters and nonvoters.

Political science has no tools to research nonvoting in depth.
A fact that is hard to admit…

Based on the discrepancies between predicted and real turnout it is generally assumed that—possibly bowing to societal pressure—some voters and nonvoters may not respond truthfully to all polling questions.

But much of the problem already begins before that – political science is not capable of reaching out to nonvoters. Mind you, they are not alone with this problem; but in any case it becomes very clear that whatever knowledge science possesses about nonvoters is based on very limited data, if any at all.

It is no surprise then when Dr de Nève states that “political science has failed to explain why and when people choose not to vote.”

Change is coming

Andreas — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:35:50 +0000

Traditionally, by which is—in this context—meant during the past fifty years or so, voting behaviour changes over the life course of a person. More often than not, being young meant less interest in voting—with the exception of the very first vote at age 18, resulting in a characteristic dip resembling a tick—and generally voting became again less relevant at old age.

But no more… – graphics and explanation follow below.

The first graph illustrates a typical age distribution of voter turnout:

Source: Prof. Dieter Roth | 2009 at the Choiceless Seminar

Interestingly—some people might be tempted to say alarmingly—this distribution is changing drastically. The percentage of young people not voting at early age is increasing remarkably throughout Europe, and the argument is not too farfetched that this tendency will later grow through the age pyramid less weakened. In other words: the higher percentage of early nonvoters suggests that less people will become dutiful voters later on in their lifes.

The second graph illustrates the blatant discrepancy between nonvoters across age-groups:

Source: PD Dr. Dorothée de Nève | 2009 at the Choiceless Seminar

Too much systematic exclusion

Andreas — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:11:29 +0000

One of the eye-openers during the intervention by and discussion with PD Dr. Dorothée de Nève–political scientist and author of the 2009 book “Nonvoters – a danger for democracy?“–was the fact that large parts of the residents of European countries are systematically excluded from voting and participating in our democracies.

Photo by Sebastian Wieschowski | youthmedia.eu

The largest group among the excluded are often migrants and young people.

To give you some quick numbers that will surely impress you as much as they impressed us at the seminar — here are some countries and the percentages of each country’s residents not entitled to vote:

24.8 % Sweden
24.9 % Great Britain
25.2 % Denmark
25.4 % Netherlands
25.6 % Germany
26.9 % Belgium
33.3 % France
35.1 % Switzerland

That’s between a quarter and the third of the people.