The turnout may be declining because voters have looked at the parties & their policies & think that two parties views are very similar & that they cannot decide which party to vote for. Voters may have looked at the parties & policies & realised that none of the parties have policies or issues that they are relate to, For Example: the Conservatives main policy may be about Pensions, & if an 18 year old student looks at their policies & decides that the policies have nothing to do with them & may not vote, either for the Conservatives or not at all. The electoral system is also old fashioned & voters may not understand how you have to register or vote. Other people may not vote due to class dealignment. Class dealignment can be explained by the reduced intensity of class consciousness in this period, caused by a number of factors such as the decline of the number of manual workers & the rise of in the service sector of employment. Class dealignment is perceived as having a particularly damaging effect on the electoral prospects of the Labour party, which failed to win a general election between the years of 1979 & 1997.
It may decrease because of class dealignment because there is no longer a specific way of telling what class you belong to therefore voters using the primacy model may not feel they are no longer a part of the class they once were.
Turnout may be decreasing due to the increase in opinion polls, if readers of a newspaper see an opinion poll & it is favoured either for the opposing party, they may not vote because they don’t think they can make a change to the prediction or outcome, or if it is favoured to the party that they support the voter may think that there is no need to vote as their party is going to win anyway. This is often what happens.
Turnout may also be decreasing due to bad media attention, for example, scandals with ministers or members of parliament. Also the media can take parties issues & ‘spin’ them to either influence the voters to vote for that party or put voters off. The recency model could also be to blame for the decreasing turnout, in the recency model voters are likely to “shop around” the parties to see which policies are about them & are more likely to vote for different parties each time they vote or not vote at all because, again they can not decide which party to vote for.
Created by 00middlebrookl
