low voter turnout - a threat to democracy in the uk?
The strength of enthusiasm for and engagement with the democratic process in Britain is vital to sustaining a healthy representative democracy. Voter turnout is measured by the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast their vote in elections for various levels of government.
The turnout at UK General Elections since 1945 is shown in the chart below
Turnout peaks at 82% in 1950 - but the long term trend in voter participation has been downwards. By 1983, turnout was doen to 72% - and despite an improvement in participation in both 1987 and 1992 (when the closeness of the battle prompted more voters to cast their vote) - the last two general elections has seen a sharp fall in turnout. 2001 may be seen in future years to have been a watershed. The overall level of turnout across the United Kingdom collapsed from 71% in 1997 to 59.3% in 2001.
Tuesday 30 March 2010
Tutor2u - low voter turnout - a threat to democracy in the uk?
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Yes, there has been a remarkable collapse in voter turnout in recent years (though not in the usa!), there's a good graph here in wikipedia...
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turnout.png
Why?
Convergence of political parties towards the centre, removing policy differences in the process.
General distrust of politicians has increased due to failure to realise promises to the electorate.
I believe the downward trend will continue until a party emerges that takes the country by storm, something good and radically different like the ipod usurping the walkman.
I'm predicting the lowest turnout ever in May!