If you're a politics student, you'll probably have the term 'participation crisis' branded across the back of your eyes at this point. If you're not, I'm sure you can guess at the meaning. Participation crisis is a term used across politics to describe the worryingly low and declining trend of active engagement from citizens in all ways; turnout at elections, lobbying and party memberships are some examples of figures that are falling.
Undoubtedly, a lack of political engagement is concerning for a democracy – a healthy democracy is hard to characterise, but most of us would agree that we could recognise one if we found it, and it would probably constitute an executive (Government) making decisions that are reflective of the population's wants, which has popular support and generally takes action to improve the life of the citizens they govern. (We might also suggest that the government would fall more or less on the centre of the political spectrum.)
Turnouts at this recent 2024 election were at an all time low, alongside faith in public institutions including Parliament itself. Arguably, fixing the former would aid the latter, since decisions made by Parliament would reasonably be expected to suit the population's wants and therefore return the faith. However, the vicious circle is clear; political leaders have taken advantage of their power or made countless errors, and as such have eroded our trust in public institutions. As a result the public feel hopeless and don't vote, but the only way to bring their own hope back is through voting! You see the issue, I imagine.
There are a number of ways that politicians could attempt to raise turnout (some of which are as simple as a genuine apology for their party's failings, though perhaps we have moved beyond that), but I want to draw attention to a few studies which could have real and immediate impacts. First and foremost, politicians have to stop lamenting how many people don't vote, and start telling people how many people are voting – even better, telling people that those in their area or neighbourhoods are voting has a significant impact! People are more likely to be nudged into paying their debts quickly if they are told "9 out of 10 people in the UK pay their tax on time. You are currently in the small minority of those who don't." than any other formulation, including a normal reminder or a reference to the consequences of not paying.
This message had even larger impacts when pushed locally (i.e. 9/10 people in Greater London/Westminster...). Reminders like these have increased timely payments by 5 percentage points; a similar increase to turnout would be about 2.3 million more ballots cast. The cost of implementing it would be far from significant, given that the government already spends plenty of money on encouraging voting.
Further, it is well known that an easy way to push people to do something is to make it easy! A study at Yale found that students were 9 times more likely to get necessary tetanus shots when they were required to take out their planners and pick a time to take it (even if that time was well into the future and no appointment was made for them to do so) than when they were only given convincing information on the importance of the vaccine. This doesn't end when we graduate, though. In the 2008 US election, a study was completed to see the effects of asking specific questions about voting on turnout. Voters who were likely to vote for a certain candidate were previously called by a campaign to ask if they were going to do so. If the answer was yes, the call ended. Instead, the study asked the follow up questions: What time do you expect you'll head to the polls? Where do you expect you'll be coming from? What do you think you'll be doing before you head out? These are called 'implementation intentions', and they successfully increased turnout by 4.1%! Again, this plan would have tiny financial implications, the calls being made anyway, and in the UK, would have 1.9 million more ballots cast. While phone calls are no longer the norm of campaigning, canvassers could certainly pick up this habit as they go across doors.
The main point here is how little effort needs to be expended to have an impact on turnouts. In theory, implementing these two strategies and a few other similar ones could increase turnout to the highest levels in living memory. Of course, in reality it is never this simple, and the push to encourage voting probably has to be much more robust. That being said, a 10% increase in turnout would make a massive difference on the legitimacy in government, and bring back health and vitality to the most important system of our country – our democracy.
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