It was interesting to see the narrative spun by the right-wing media after Donald Trump won the election. Terms like “convincing”, “easy” “a clear mandate” and even “landslide” were tossed around. But the numbers don’t support these grandiose claims. Trump didn’t even get 50 percent of the votes; he got 49.9 percent, whereas Harris got 48.3 percent, a margin of about 1.5 million votes out of the more than 150 million votes cast. Harris lost the Blue Wall states - Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - by a combined 230,000 votes, which means that if roughly 115,000 people had changed their minds, Harris would have won those three states and thus the election. So yeah, it was still close.
There was another group who actually would’ve easily won the election. Turnout was 63.7 percent, so if we do the math we see that Trump only got 31.8 percent of Americans to vote for him, while Harris got 30.8 percent. This means that the people who didn’t vote at all, aka the “don’t give a damn” party, easily beat both Trump and Harris, coming in at 36.3 percent. We can do the same math here in Canada for the 2021 election. Turnout was 62.3 percent and Justin Trudeau and the Liberals got 32.6 percent of the vote. This means that only about 1 out of every 5 Canadians (20.3 percent) thought enough of Trudeau to actually vote for him. The Conservative prorated number really wasn’t any better at 21 percent, so once again the "don’t give a damn" party wins in a true landslide with 37.7 percent. It’s astonishing that a guy that 4 out of 5 Canadians don’t seem to care for or are at least indifferent to has been running the country for the last 3 years, don't you think? And just the other day, Nova Scotia had a provincial election in which only 45 percent of eligible voters bothered to show up. Yikes.
There are lots of potential explanations for why turnout is chronically low in modern democracies. The most plausible one is that many people have given up on the system; they are so disillusioned with politics and politicians that they simply refuse to participate. You hear phrases like “no matter who wins, it won’t make any difference to me.” It's unlikely that people who fall below the poverty line, who struggle just to keep the lights on and their kids fed, are going to make voting a priority. In this view, low turnout reflects the extreme inequality in our societies, as wealthier people are more likely to feel they have a stake in the outcome. (This obviously favours conservative parties.) Another cause might be that both the US and Canada have a high proportion of recent immigrants. Many of them come from countries that aren’t democracies, so they’ve never voted in their lives. Language barriers and unfamiliarity with the process can also prevent newcomers from voting.
If immigrants have legitimate excuses for not voting, the native born do not. There is little doubt that a big chunk of non-voters are simply ignorant, lazy and apathetic. The night before the 2000 federal election, a friend called me and asked me to quickly explain everything to her - who was running, how the process worked, who stood for what, etc. She literally knew nothing and this was a person who had lived in Canada her entire life, had a decent job and had gone to post-secondary school. I think there are a lot of people like her out there. They simply don’t care, or don’t understand that politics actually impacts every part of our lives. I get that people are busy with work and family and don’t have much time or energy left over. But it seems like a lot of folks will put way more time into shopping for a new fridge or following their favourite sports team than into making even the tiniest effort to learn about the issues and candidates, and to go out and vote.
It isn’t just about the percentage that vote. The evidence is pretty strong that out of those that do vote, a significant number don’t know what the hell they're doing - succumbing to blatant disinformation, voting for things they are actually against, not really understanding the issues (especially with regards to the economy). And frankly, it's never been easier to learn about candidates and issues because we have this thing called the internet, meaning all kinds of information is just a click away. Of course, disinformation is also only a click away, but it isn't really that hard to avoid it or see through it - the mainstream media, despite the lies the Right tells about them, can still mainly be relied on (and yes, there are even a few reputable conservative sources). We seem to have two extremes: the loons who are obsessed with politics and who post reams of angry and false political crap on social media, and those who just can't be bothered to even lift a finger. The worst part is, the more people that disengage and give up, the more power we hand to the extremists.
There aren't obvious solutions. Would proportional representation help get more people engaged? I think it might, but as I detailed in another post, it comes with its own set of problems, one of which is more frequent elections. Maybe we need to teach civics classes in grade school so that people learn what citizenship entails? I assume that some basics are being taught but quickly forgotten, kind of like algebra. Making voting mandatory? Well, the government has a hard enough time getting the resources together to do its other jobs, so I don't think adding this bureaucratic nightmare is going to work out very well. Besides, we want people to be engaged, not just to vote blindly.
But something needs to change or our democracy will keep on deteriorating. An open and free society bestows many rights but also a few obligations. Shirk the latter and you will eventually lose the former. Freedom is not a one-way street.
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