The fall in youth political engagement? how to make it rise?
Did you vote in the last general election? I want you to keep your answer to this until the end of this blog.
young people and political engagement is always a tough issue to understand, but why? Why don’t young people take hold of their future by becoming more politically engaged, and vote at elections.
since the 1992 general election voter turnout for voters aged between 18-34 have dropped drastically and are still currently very low, why is this, is it because young people no longer feel represented by party leaders in politics or is it due to the fact that they don’t feel that there views and worries are cared about and dealt with by parliament. when looking at the figure below we can see the changes within turnout for different age groups at elections. we can see how while voters between 18-34 have dropped in turnout all other catagories have risen steadily, with the highest being the over 65s, this is usually the target audience for many campaigns from political parties while younger voters are not really targeted.
voter turnout by age throughout elections
Courtesy of :https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/
Matthews et.al. states that many political parties “embody a ‘culture of non-participation’, denying young people the opportunity to express their opinions and preferences.” This helps me to suggest that the reason for the lack of youth political engagement, especially with elections is due to how political parties deal with people who affiliate with them. This shows how the youth in society are becoming disengaged from politics because they feel that they can not express themselves and their opinions with any political party and so are unable to create change within society no matter how hard they try, so in turn I believe this leads to the disengagement of youth in politics and then stops them from engaging with politics in this country.
Dalton (2004) states that “Contemporary democracies are facing a challenge today. This challenge comes from democracy’s own citizens, who have grown distrustful of politicians, sceptical about democratic institutions, and disillusioned about how the democratic process functions.” This could be why us, the youth of society are no longer willing to get involved politically, do you feel distrustful of politicians? I hear you say why would people feel distrustful of politicians well, why would you trust someone who promised to give you something and in turn for your trust, all they did was in fact take away from you would you trust them. to see this in action lets look at the coalition government between the conservatives and lib dems. The liberal democrats made a promise to not increase tuition fees for universities, which in turn meant that they gained a large amount of votes from young voters, however they immediately put a rise in place for tuition fees.
We can see in the two figures below how youth voters felt distrust within politicians, as once the liberal democrats went against their promise to university students fee rise’s the trust that young voters had dropped and in turn so did the amount of those who voted for them in the next election. I believe that this can show how young voters, feel alienated and used by politicians within society, and so decide that they will not vote as it will not make any change, as the promises that they are made by politicians are not true.
youth vote in 2010 general election
Courtesy of: https://www.grb.uk.com/blog/ge17-how-the-young-vote-has-changed-since-2010-facts
youth vote 2015 election
Courtesy of: https://www.grb.uk.com/blog/ge17-how-the-young-vote-has-changed-since-2010-facts
How can we make the youth of today become more politically engaged and more inclined to vote?
We live in an age where the internet is prominent within the youth of todays lives, this is how they talk to their friends, get their news and express their opinions. Could this also be a way that we can get more people to become politically engaged within society, does the political process need to adapt to suit the lives of the youth today and in essence become easier to engage with. Would this help to shift the feeling of non-participation that many political parties have, mentioned earlier, in order to actively encourage people to become more engaged with politics. This could help with voting in elections, I feel that voting online will help to gain higher voter turnouts, as they do not have to leave home, I mean if we allow postal votes would it not be as easy to do online voting? I believe increasingly using the internet and social media for politics, could be a way to cope with getting around political engagement especially through the coronavirus pandemic as it means that we are socially distanced and can still engage politically while we are all being told to ‘stay home’. However are they likely to do this as it will disengage those who the government want to vote, the older generation who they know are more inclined to vote to keep them in power.
one other way that I believe we can increase political engagement, would be to ensure that active citizenship and political engagement is taught in all secondary schools to ensure that younger people are aware of how to be politically involved.
Finally I would like you now to think of the question I asked earlier on weather you did or did not vote in the last election, and now ask would you vote in the next election?
Bibliography
How the young vote has changed since 2010 Available at: https://www.grb.uk.com/blog/ge17-how-the-young-vote-has-changed-since-2010-facts
How to get young people to vote Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlYpMGI6iNQ
Martin. A, Young people and politics: political engagement in the Anglo-American democracies, 2012, Routledge, Available at: https://r2.vlereader.com/Reader?ean=9780203112274#
The rise of the grey vote Available at: https://blogs.bath.ac.uk/iprblog/2019/05/21/the-rise-of-the-grey-vote/
Sloam. J, Rebooting Democracy: Youth Participation in Politics in the UK, Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 60, Issue 4, October 2007, Pages 548–567, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsm035