'In public discourse protest and apathy are most often taken as the main reasons when citizens do not vote, and therefore also to explain declining voter turnout in national elections.’ Picture: Ayanda Ndamane/ Independent Newspapers
Over time researchers have described close to 200 variables that determine voter behaviour in national elections. Variables with which to make sense also of types of voters and voter turnout, which in turn serve as an indicator of the health of a democracy.
Broadly speaking, a first distinction of voter groups is between the voter and non-voter, but with various subsets, such as the protest-voter or apathetic non-voter, among many others.
The various descriptions may switch and be equally apt for both main categories, such as the apathetic voter or protest non-voter. As an example, the distinction in this case would be between a citizen who may vote or not out of protest, or in apathy become a non-voter that ignores the elections, or become a voter, but an ignorant one that votes randomly.
In public discourse protest and apathy are most often taken as the main reasons when citizens do not vote, and therefore also to explain declining voter turnout in national elections.
Protest and apathy may also be considered as reasons for spoiled votes, meaning that voters either intentionally spoil their vote at the ballot in protest, or unintentionally by simply not knowing how to vote.
In the same way, variables that have been shown to have an impact on voter turnout in different contexts may lead to opposite behaviours by voters – the same situation in different societies and democracies may lead to both increases or decreases in turnout.
Ethnicity, for example, is one such variable. Ethnic rhetoric by politicians or conflicts between ethnic groups may in one country or region cause citizens to stay away in fear or solidarity. In other contexts, such situations may trigger greater awareness of national politics and the need for citizen action.
Following the results and outcomes of our own national and provincial elections, voter turnout presents one of the most critical analyses required. It tells the story behind the story.
Another story hides behind the optimism and sense of new possibilities that permeate public and popular discourses following the dramatic changes in percentages of the vote parties won.
It is a story long in the making of citizens seemingly disconnecting. The last two national elections saw a drop of 8% each in voter turnout. In 2014 saw 73.4% turnout. In 2019, just over 66% and this year only 58.6%. The story deepens when read against increases in the voting age population and the number of registered voters.
Of 25.3 million registered voters in 2014, 18.6 million voted. In 2019, 17.6 million of 26.7 million registered voters voted, and in 2024,16.2 million of 27.7 million.
The actual number of voters decreased as the number of registered voters increased. Whichever way one would review, read and interpret these types of statistics over the coming weeks, few versions of the story of our democratic elections will reasonably cast this trajectory of citizen participation as a wholesome story.
However, any attempt to paint a picture of the health of a democracy must find its way through an unending number of group and individual motivations. As many citizens, as many reasons, and therefore as many possible variables to make sense of the trajectory of citizen action.
It therefore follows that even if only a theoretical possibility, it may well be that declining voter turnout in the South African context may in actual fact upend a story of a threatened democracy – a non-vote in protest may just as well indicate a strong democracy.
* Rudi Buys, NetEd Group Chief Academic Officer and Executive Dean, DaVinci Business Institute.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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