Low voter turnout is bad for democracy
I SPENT last Wednesday morning at a post-election seminar organised by the Electoral Commission.
I know exactly what you're thinking, 'what an exciting life you lead, Alex'! But it was a genuinely interesting morning, because after someone from the Electoral Commission explained that their job was to provide the tools and structures for getting people registered, while the job of the political parties was to persuade the registered voters to vote, it set me to wondering why turnout continues to fall.
The 2008 Presidential Election was one of the most covered and exciting contests since the 1960s, with Obama's team spending millions of dollars on a get-the-vote-out exercise that embraced door-knocking, television campaigns, e-mails, twittering, literature and cold-calling.
He was continually described as the most charismatic and eloquent candidate ever, yet turnout increased by a mere 1.5 percent to 56.8 – indicating that almost half the electorate didn't care one way or the other who sat in the White House.
There are a number of reasons why turnout is falling, one of which is that an increasing number of people find it difficult to tell the difference between the main political parties. Let's face it, the Conservatives are likely to win the next general election, but their room for political and economic manoeuvre is constrained by the mess they will inherit from Gordon Brown. Brown, meanwhile, accuses Cameron of planning huge cuts, knowing that if Labour did actually win he would have to introduce the same degree of cutting. In other words, the electorate just assumes that cuts will come irrespective of who wins and that assumption has a knock-on effect on turnout.
I'm old enough to remember the time when there was a policy gap of Grand Canyon proportions between the Labour and Conservative parties. I remember Ted Heath's 1974 'Who Runs the Country?' campaign. I remember the great showdowns between left and right when Mrs Thatcher became leader and later Prime Minister. Politics was actually exciting in those days, precisely because the outlook of the two main parties was so different.
But because the electorate now believes that there isn't much of a difference between Conservative and Labour they tend to be turned off by the established parties in general and don't regard them as particularly relevant to their own lives; which may explain why smaller parties like the BNP and UKIP are beginning to get a foothold. Voters want parties which reflect their gut feelings, as opposed to parties which have a nuanced response to everything.
I don't for one moment think that UKIP MEPs will ever be in a position to topple the European Parliament and lead the United Kingdom out of the European Union, but I do believe that their growing strength will have a policy impact on the Conservative Party in particular.
It's interesting to note that something very similar is happening in Northern Ireland, for long the exception to the falling turnout trend.
And it's happening for the same reason as elsewhere – people find it harder and harder to tell the differences between the parties. We have a mandatory coalition at Stormont and the only thing an election does is determine the number of departments each party gets. The TUV vote can be explained by the fact that there is a core unionist vote which has not been and never will be comfortable with Sinn Fein in government. And that vote feels betrayed by the DUP. I wrote in May 2007: "the key test of the arrangements reached by the DUP and Sinn Fein is whether or not Ian Paisley can hold onto his hardliners. They represent a very significant section of his core vote and if a credible champion emerges to reflect those concerns, then the DUP could have very serious electoral problems further down the line."
The real challenge for the DUP, UUP, SDLP and Sinn Fein now is carving out a role for themselves in the era of power-sharing and post-Troubles politics. Even if mandatory coalition disappeared tomorrow the fact remains that some sort of coalition involving unionists and nationalists is necessary. That's not as easy as it looks, particularly against a background in which unionists and nationalists continue to have differing and mutually contradictory interpretations of the purpose of the 1998 Agreement. Putting it very bluntly, we won't have good government (let alone effective government) in Northern Ireland for so long as we have conflicting agendas, mutual veto, limited accountability, hamstrung committees and no formal and funded opposition.
And if the electorate believes that devolution isn't making a difference for the better then growing numbers of them will stop voting. Either that, or smaller protest parties will emerge and the operational difficulties facing the present Assembly will simply get worse.
Turnout (unless it is compulsory – which I'm very much opposed to) is ultimately dependent upon a number of factors: what the parties are offering; whether the electorate agrees with them; how they view the outgoing government (never underestimate the maxim that opposition parties don't win, governments lose); and, most important of all in my view, whether people believe that government in particular and elected bodies in general make a real difference to their lives.
The one message coming from democracies across the world, irrespective of the voting system employed, is that voters everywhere are staying at home. Not because they are content with politicians, but rather, because they couldn't care less which of them is in government. That is bad for democracy and it is also very bad for government. Falling turnout forces mainsteam parties to fish in a smaller pool, which, in turn, widens the gap between political parties and the people they govern.
But I'm not sure that the big parties mind too much. As long as they get elected, and the falling turnout hits them all equally, then, from their perspective at least, it doesn't really matter if turnout is 65 per cent or 45 per cent. But in terms of moral and political authority it does matter.
A government elected with 40 odd per cent from a 50 per cent turnout is less a government and more a pressure group. And pressure groups, as we all know, tend to have very narrowly focused visions and agendas.
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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