Question

What factors influence voters turnout and participation during elections?

How important are political parties in our society?

Answer 1

Answer: Electoral participation rates depend on many factors, including the type of electoral system, the social groupings to which voters belong, the voters’ personalities and beliefs, their places of residence, and a host of other idiosyncratic factors.

The level and type of election have a great impact on the rate of electoral participation. Electoral turnout is greater in national than in state or provincial elections, and greater in the latter than in local elections. If local elections are held concurrently with provincial or national elections, generally a higher voter turnout is achieved than for nonconcurrent elections. Whether an election is partisan or nonpartisan also affects turnout, as fewer people participate in nonpartisan elections. Supporters of political parties vote more often than those without a partisan identification. Participation is also usually greater in candidate elections than in noncandidate elections such as referenda. There is evidence that elections based on proportional representation have higher electoral turnouts than majority or plurality elections. Voter turnout tends to be depressed in noncompetitive or safe electoral districts and elevated in competitive ones. The perceived closeness of an electoral contest and the degree of ideological polarization between parties or candidates can affect the competitiveness of the election and consequently its turnout. The frequency of elections is also related to voter participation, as fewer people tend to participate in countries where elections are more frequent.

Technicalities in the electoral law may disenfranchise many potential voters. For example, people who change their legal residence may temporarily lose their vote because of residence requirements for voters in their new electoral district. Complicated voter-registration procedures, combined with a high level of geographic mobility, significantly reduce the size of the active electorate in the United States, whereas in many other countries the size of the electorate is maximized by government-initiated registration immediately prior to an election. Voter registration in the United States is largely left to the initiative of individuals and political parties, though attempts to increase voter registration were made in the 1990s through the implementation of “motor-voter laws,” which allowed citizens to register to vote when they received or renewed their driver’s licenses.

Relatively low levels of electoral participation are associated with low levels of education, occupational status, and income. Those groups in society that have been most recently enfranchised also tend to vote at lower rates. For a significant period of time in the 20th century, women voted less frequently than men, though the difference had been erased by the end of the century in most countries. The rates of participation of racial minorities are generally lower than those of majority groups, and members of the working class vote less frequently than members of the middle class. In many countries, participation by young people is significantly lower than that of older people.

Political parties perform an important task in government. They bring people together to achieve control of the government, develop policies favorable to their interests or the groups that support them, and organize and persuade voters to elect theircandidates to office.