Elections Canada released the results from its National Youth Survey yesterday and, unsurprisingly, they point to a persistent and grave crisis in confidence in electoral politics among young Canadians.
As Gloria Galloway writes in today’s Globe and Mail, “the voter participation rate of people between the ages of 18 and 24 rose from 37.4 per cent in 2008 to an only slightly less abysmal 38.8 per cent in 2011. Among Canadians between the ages of 24 and 34, it actually dropped from 47.9 per cent to 45.1 per cent.”
Galloway adds that while efforts to ramp up the youth vote ahead of last May’s federal election were successful among post-secondary-educated youth, a significant number of young people from key subgroups surveyed by Elections Canada chose not to cast a ballot, turning out to the polls “in far fewer numbers than those in the general population.”
“Whether it was young people in the aboriginal or ethnic communities, the disabled, the rural youth or the unemployed,” writes Galloway, “all told the Elections Canada survey that they just weren’t interested in voting.”
While there is much agreement on the need to reverse these negative voting trends, there is far less consensus on the best way to approach the problem.
As the headline of today’s featured article suggests, some believe a national strategy that targets youth voters is the solution. Based on their findings that motivation and access are two central barriers to youth engagement, Elections Canada focused their recommendations on interventions that will “address young people’s access to the electoral process,” such as increasing awareness of how, when and where to vote, and setting up polling stations in more youth-friendly areas.
They also highlight the importance of longer-term strategies to address motivational barriers, including improving civics education and making special efforts to reach youth with lower educational attainment.
While mobilizing young people to take a more active role in politics is no doubt an important piece of the puzzle, such a unidirectional approach places the onus for disengagement solely on the shoulders of non-voters, without addressing the reasons why their sense of civic duty or interest in politics has been eroded.
Elections Canada’s Marc Maynard is quoted by Galloway asking: “’What is it that makes Canadians interested in politics...what is it that turns them off from time to time?’”
On December 7th, Samara will release a new report that offers key insights into this critical question. “The Real Outsiders” is the outcome of a series of focus groups that Samara conducted with non-voting Canadians which reveals new information about the underpinnings of political disengagement in Canada.
Only once we’ve answered Maynard’s most apt question can we come up with a truly meaningful national strategy targeting non-voting youth, and perhaps the political leaders they want to hear from, too.