Turnout for elections
continues to decrease or
remain low
General Election: 1979:
76%, 1997: 71%, 2005:
61%.
2010: Ardwick in MCR 20% turnout.
European Elections, local council
elections and Mayoral elections turnout is
on average less than 50%
Membership of political
parties has decreased from
1.8m in 1980, 0.3m in 1998,
0.27m by 2006.
Less than 1% of the electorate are a
party member.
A government of the people?
BUT
Pressure group activity has increased. The
largest pressure groups have more members
than all of the political parties combined.
Increasing number of protests.
Online petitions (E-Petitions)
Why is this a problem?
The legitimacy of the government can be
questioned if its authority is based on an
election of low turnout.
The 2005-10 Labour government only received 30% of the votes when only
61% of the electorate voted. Therefore less than 1/4 of the electorate voted
for the governing party.
A government by the people?
How can the population expect our
MP's to represent the people if they
will not vote?
Do new laws have the
consent of the people if
there are a lack of voters?
Local councillors, local Mayors and
MEP's cannot claim to have the support
of the people.
What does it suggest about the UK politicians
and political system if a large proportion of the
electorate refuse to vote?
How can political
participation be increased?
More use of direct democracy vie referendums
There has been an increase in the use
of referendums in the UK since 1997
Scottish devolution referendum achieved a high
turnout but the other have suffered from low turnout
making the decision meaningless.
The population have elected MP's to
represent the people and govern on our
behalf.
Soctish independence and EU membership
referendums are planned for the future.
Referendums are usually used to give support for changes to the
political system. Not practicle to use for each government decision.
Citizenship lessons but these have not
achieved success so far.
Lowering the voting age. There is no evidence to
suggest that 16 year olds want to vote or have the
capacity to understand the political arguments.