Who don’t young people vote? Self-confessed ignorance, and dislike of the mainstream
Consistently low turnout rates among young people are often interpreted as apathy. But this is not the case, argues Iro Konstantinou. They acknowledge their ignorance of politics and are unhappy with the citizenship curriculum, wanting it widened to include practical democratic issues rather than just party politics. Many regard social media activism and individual actions as more important than voting.
Turnout among young voters in the UK has been significantly lower than that among older people, and even lower compared to other European countries. Partisan politics have been quick to brand young voters as apathetic. But empirical evidence from an ethnographic study I conducted at a private school in London tells a different story. The attitude of young people towards politics is not due to apathy or disengagement but a result of the wrong education they receive through the curriculum, as well as of a disillusionment with mainstream party politics. It is important to note that the cohort of the school comprises mainly of white, middle-class pupils whose parents are in the media, banking, and other highly paid professions; and I would argue that this plays a large role in how they engage with politics.
First, the distinction between engagement and disengagement is in itself problematic. As O’Toole notes, this frames millennials as a subgroup of the larger population, failing to acknowledge that young people have different views and needs from say middle-aged voters or pensioners (worries about the housing market are a large factor in this). Also, by equating disengagement with apathy, we forget that people abstain from political decisions as part of a protest – a political action in itself. And most importantly, the definition given when we talk about absenteeism from politics is very narrow. Here, I argue that young people view the political as a much broader concept. Their actions transcend the ballot and party politics, and this should be taken into account if parties want to attract more young voters.
Farthing argued that young people do not want politicians who try to appear cool in order to attract their vote (examples include Obama, Hillary Clinton and in the past Blair and his Britpop phase). These attempts to make politics look ‘fun’ are branded by young people as cringing and rather pathetic. In the same sense that Trump was heavily criticised and ridiculed for his obsession with being rejected by celebrities, young people do not see that by hanging out with the cool kids brings any outcomes in policies or makes any difference in their efficiency as politicians.
The socioeconomic background of the young people in this study is important. Both they and school staff admit that they are engaged with current affairs and will most likely vote, but this does not make their engagement unproblematic. They get the information to make informed decisions in a rather more nuanced way than adults might think.
School staff believed that the majority of them would just have a superficial knowledge of what is happening and that they will shape their ideas from what is thrown at them, no matter how biased it is. For example, they blame the media for depicting Labour policies as vastly against the ‘rich’ and therefore not ensuring the financial interests of those in the higher tax brackets. Given the socioeconomic structure of the school, a lot of these young people shape their ideas from discussions at home, which will be about money (not the lack of it). Although parents will rarely try to convince their children to vote a certain way, if at all, and seldom do they reveal their political affiliations, one major theme recurred on what mattered with regards to policies: financial security; and they believed this could only be achieved by the Conservatives in the 2015 general election.
But, despite a preference towards the Conservatives, the majority of them did not see the point in voting. Their reasons were twofold: first, they did not believe they had adequate knowledge and second, they did not identify with mainstream politics.
Although a lot of the participants in the focus groups were taking A-Level politics, they felt they did not know enough about the impact of policies on their everyday life. As one of them said:
‘If you put a paper in front of me now and said you have to vote I would vote Conservative.’ [But] ‘I genuinely don’t think I know what their manifesto is. I wouldn’t know what they are talking about. But there are no options. This is why I will probably not vote’.
They think that the curriculum teaches to the test and not to provide practical real-life knowledge so ‘if you want to know what is going on, you have to look for the information yourself’. And the truth is that most of them will not. They don’t feel there is enough time for them to do that and they think it is the responsibility of the school to encourage it. They believe that the school ‘waste[s] time with Citizenship and Life Skills, which is a joke, and not teaching us about real issues’. Other reasons, apart from the lack of critical knowledge, is that they think all parties are the same, with ‘very little real distinctions between left and right’ (pre-2015 general elections) and even now that ‘Corbyn is different, with real ideologies but very unelectable, people with money do not trust him to secure their interests’ (post-2015 elections). This sounds like a very neoliberal, materialistic thinking – almost assuming that all young people care about is money.
Partially, this is true. The young people in this study grew up with certain privileges, and it is hard for them to imagine how it would be not to have them. A lot of their rhetoric as a result will revolve around issues of money and economic capital. However, they do not think this is ‘what politics should be about’. Since millennials think that policies are driven by the middle-aged vote (‘politicians only care about middle-aged people because they vote, young people see that and they don’t vote, so politicians don’t focus on them, it is a vicious cycle’) how do they envisage politics, or believe any real change can be made?
Beck talks about self-actualisation politics; living your ideologies and making changes on an individual level. It is an approach that appeals more to young people. In this sense, they see lifestyle choices as political actions: being vegan, for example, or not smoking and drinking so much like older people (it is not cool these days) were mentioned as actions which will bring some real change rather than the waffle of politicians. Caring about LGBT rights, changing their profile photo on social media to show their solidarity, blogging about issues which are close to their heart seem more effective to them compared to empty political promises. And these were mentioned as political actions. They would be mobilised to vote, but on issues which they viewed as important and they believed they had some power on, such as the EU referendum.
So, how can policies take into account opinions and actions expressed by young people? The curriculum needs to stop teaching only to the test. Citizenship should be a subject which encompasses wider and more practical social and democratic issues. More importantly, however, those looking at young people’s (dis)engagement should consider their socioeconomic background: what issues are important for millennials? They must also ensure that politics moves away from the ballot and traditional party politics through a wider discourse incorporating new means, such as social media, blogs and social concerns which transcend politics as policies.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. It first appeared at LSE British Politics and Policy.
Iro Konstantinou
is a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology at the University of Warwick.
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A genuine difficulty in the UK is that there is an unease in straying too far into politics or anything political in schools – for fear of being accused of spreading propaganda: even the choice of what to talk about is a worry and can lead to complaints of bias (on the basis of pupils being led in the direction of where the teacher wants them to be lead). So pupils start with an anodyne dead bat in schools when it comes to issues – and it’s probably understandable.
The point made by the author about the young voters from rich families was cringe-makingly apparent in interviews the day after the EU referendum. Many are posted on youtube and give an impression of pre-war upper class people, accents straight out of PG Wodehouse, with no people or social skills, clearly terrified of ‘those ghastly working class people’ – “I mean raaahly, they, like, I mean don’t know ENOUGH to make that choice”. However when asked a simple question (who is your MEP…who makes the laws in the EU?) they themselves had not a clue. Nothing. Blank. One girl dismissed the interviewer like a mediaeval monarch waving away a serf when asked a simple question about the EU. To them, the EU is vaguely about “being able to visit Hettie’s pop’s yacht in Switzerland and work in a French PR company for nothing, paid for by ‘pop'”. And ‘nasty working class fascist racist Nazis’ trying to stop them.
If that is how it has become (added to not bothering to vote then bleating), it is a pretty appalling state of affairs. Intrerestingly, though,m far greater engagement is apparent in France…where the young are the biggest supporters of Marine Le Pen for the presidency. Go figure, as they say, and maybe that is the reason why schools offer anaesthetic and materialism as their commitment to politics – it stops the little beggars going rogue.
The current campaign to get potential voters to ‘engage with’ politics fails to ‘engage with’ Russell Brand’s insights (and with the frustration of those who care but feel impotent). The problem (of elector disengagement) can be qualified very simply:
1. The reason why non-registered potential voters do not register is because they do not see the point in registering.
2. The reason why non-registered potential voters do not see the point in registering is because they do not see the point in voting.
3. The reason why non-voting potential voters do not see the point in voting is because:
a. They cannot see any options which would reliably-reflect their political preferences.
b. Our lousy current voting processes would anyway ignore most of their votes.
Unfortunately, the current constitutional reform movement puts forward two conflicting messages to potential voters:
1. The current constitutional reform movement (rightly) informs us that the vast majority of us will/would be wasting our time and dissipating our democratic energy by registering and voting (because the lousy current voting processes will ignore most of our votes).
2. The current constitutional reform movement (wrongly) urges us to register and vote (thereby wasting our time, dissipating our democratic energy, and reinforcing the venal self-serving complacency of those who oppose constitutional reform).
Citizens are not fools. They will not buy the above muddled pair of conflicting messages for long. Brand was/is right in his analysis and insights. However, Brand failed to provide a constructive alternative. Apathy is not a constructive alternative. Not-voting is not a constructive alternative. Taking over St Paul’s cathedral is not a constructive alternative.
The answer (bizarrely) is fully-proportional representation!
With our current (non-proportional) voting processes, there is a spurious but overwhelming imperative for ‘natural’ Parties to merge into a total of precisely-two ‘covert coalition’ Parties. In the UK, the current Conservative Party is a ‘covert coalition’ of a Europhobe Conservative Party and a Europhile Conservative Party, and the current Labour Party is a ‘covert coalition’ of an Old Labour Party and a New Labour Party. These two ‘covert coalition’ Parties both present themselves (rightly) as the only Parties which stand any chance of dominating a government, and (deceitfully) as all (mutually-exclusive) things to all (diverse) ‘floating’ voters.
With fully-proportional representation, there would be no such spurious but overwhelming imperative. In the UK, the current ‘Conservative covert coalition’ party could/would split into a ‘Europhobe Conservative’ party and a ‘Europhile Conservative’ party, the current ‘Labour covert coalition’ party could/would split an ‘Old Labour’ party and a ‘New Labour’ party, and the electorate would have a ‘real’ democratic choice from a wider range of substantial but non-dominant ‘natural’ Parties.
That would be a democratic regime with which it was worth ‘engaging’:
1. Potential voters would want to vote:
a. They would have a ‘real’ choice from ‘natural’ Parties.
b. All votes would matter, and would carry equal weight.
2. Potential voters would want to register (in order to vote).
The problem here, Tim, is that where we DO have proportional representation in the UK (for example on the London Assembly where I was elected), turnout among the young was sensationally lower (in the region of 10-14%). The 65+ were still way ahead – and this process has now had 5 elections to test run. In elections like police commissioners etc the figures for the young are even worse! Yet every vote really does count in those elections.
The worry is that starting with the young of about 15-20 years ago, a very sizeable proportion are taking their habits of non voting on with them into adulthood. Surely it is as much to do with the fact that politics has converged, politicians have increasingly had less power to offer what we want, and therefore there seems no imperative to vote.
Listening to some politician chuntering on that ‘we must work with our partners to ensure a satisfactory conclusion’ (in place of being able to specify what they will do) when faced with a serious issue really does NOT get up any enthusiasm. One prays that leaving the Eu will allow politicians to be more honest and frank and offer alternatives rather than the EU-approved economic and social policies which act like a dead hand on the political class when standing for election…well, you live in hope…
I would never claim that proportional representation would in itself solve the problem.
I suggested that proportional representation would remove the overwhelming imperative for ‘natural’ Parties to merge into a total of precisely-two ‘covert coalition’ Parties, and that the current ‘Conservative covert coalition’ party could/would then split into a ‘Europhobe Conservative’ party and a ‘Europhile Conservative’ party, the current ‘Labour covert coalition’ party could/would then split an ‘Old Labour’ party and a ‘New Labour’ party, and the electorate would then have a ‘real’ democratic choice from a wider range of substantial but non-dominant ‘natural’ Parties. It would be that ‘real’ democratic choice from a wider range of substantial but non-dominant ‘natural’ Parties which would entice non-electors to vote.
However, that ‘real’ democratic choice from a wider range of substantial but non-dominant ‘natural’ Parties will not happen until we have fully-proportional representation for the Commons. Proportional Representation for the London Assembly would never be sufficient to remove the overwhelming overwhelming imperative for ‘natural’ Parties to merge into a total of precisely-two ‘covert coalition’ Parties.
Please read the whole of my contribution before condeming half of it!
Tim I did indeed read it and my comment was a comment, not a condemnation of your contribution. Apols if that’s how it appeared. The difficulty I always find with any idea that changing the system will magically and dramatically engage more people – especially the young – is that so many changes have been made in the past of one form or another, or trialled and tested, and it has made precisely no difference. Except that the problem gets worse. I would be interested to see where your idea has worked and had a dramatic impact on turnout by the young.
Apart from systems, there is also the vital core question of whether people see the value of voting anyway – it has often appeared to me since the late 80s that the young grasped well before the old that with so much policy now decided outside of parliament and the Westminster parties offering really almost the same things for so long, ‘what is the point?’ of voting. Whatever happens with the systems. Never mind two ‘covert coalition parties, in this instance and in many things people are now voting for a one-party state dressed up in the finery of adversarial politics. There is no point in voting for an Old Labour and New Labour if they both have to implement the same rules and laws…as the Europhile Tories or Eurosceptic Tories. They are one party with different noises to divert from the reality..
For example when Corbyn was elected Labour leader he offered a genuine anti-austerity idea of People’s Quantitive Easing – the EU obliged him to scrap it because it fell foul of the EU’s control over policy on what the banks are (and are not) allowed to invest in (via Lisbon Art 123) in terms of public spending. In power, he would have to follow the Tories’ (preferred) policy in power, assuming the UK is still in the EU. Whatever fine words and mood music he used to get a successful message across. So basically, the Tories and Labour (and LibDems) have to offer the same things across whole swathes of crucial laws and rules, and their only campaigning variant is personality (eg attacking Corbyn personally via tame media etc, I say this as a Corbyn opponent not an apologist) and the clever use by all of mood music and dog whistling.
Out of the EU this might change, because the UK parties and governments will not just be the agents for a higher authority, implementing rules and Directives that they cannot alter, repeal or amend…but I would not hold the breath.
No amount of tinkering with systems or the use of technology etc will make a blind bit of difference if it dawns on the voter that what they are voting for is in essence one and the same thing, just with a different colour rosette. There is the start point imho.