Has electoral behaviour changed? How does volatile voting effect democracy?

Résumé du document

In the last few decades, the main changes in the electoral behaviour are the decline of the turnout and the development of volatile voting. Those two elements affect the political life of the countries because political parties have to adapt themselves to answer the expectations of the voters. The Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance made a survey to discover what factors influenced the turnout. According to Françoise Subileau, the decreasing turnout is due to 'the decline of ideologies, the disappearance of communism, and the loss of influence of the Catholic Church'. All of these elements led to a vagueness of electoral programs and to a confusion in the voters mind. The European Construction could also be a plausible explanation.

Extraits

[...] Only of Dutch registered voters are members of a party. In the European level, membership is also decreasing: in the 1960's of the European population was member of a party, in the 1980's and now it is the case for only of the European adult citizens.(ICS, N.D). People trust less and less the parties. The education level rise and with the development of media such as Internet, people have new means to be inform about the political life. They have access to more informations than it was the case before. [...]

[...] According to Françoise Subileau, the decreasing turnout is due to decline of ideologies, the disappearance of communism, and to the loss of influence of the Catholic Church (the electoral duty was part of the traditional catholic morale)” (Subileau, 2002). All of those elements led to a vagueness of electoral programs and to a confusion in the voters mind. The European Construction could also be a plausible explanation. Indeed, electors have the feeling that decision are taken in the European level and no more in the national level. (Subileau, 2002). [...]

[...] In all of those countries, blank or spoilt vote are really important.(Subileau, 2002). It shows this system only permits to have a high turnout. It is not sure that it really cures the basics reasons of abstention.(Vie Publique, 2006). People vote in order to be law-abiding, it does not mean that they do it by belief or by real strong support to a political party. Turnout also depends on the kind of elections. For instance, in France, turnout is always higher in the case of Presidential elections than during European Elections (In of abstention in the European Elections of abstention in the presidential election of 2007) (TNS Sofres, 2008). [...]

[...] It encourages the development of a “protesting vote” (Perrineau, 2002). People vote for parties which have no chance to access to the government but which permit them to oppose the traditional parties. This kind of vote explains the growing influence of the populist parties in Europe. (Haider in Austria, Le Pen in France, Umberto Bossi in Italy, Pia Kjaersgaard in Denmark) (Perrineau, 2002). This protesting votes led, for instance, to the elimination of Lionel Jospin, candidate of the traditional left party, the “Parti Socialiste”, in the first turn of the French presidential election in 2002 and the accession of Jean-Marie Le Pen, candidate of the Front- National, a populist party to the second turn. [...]

[...] Italy has the same electoral system but the turnout does not decline as fast. So, the author is wondering if those countries have made a maladapted choice “according to the realities of Eastern Europe”. For the citizens, not voting may have many explanations. There are two kinds of abstention: passive and active. The first one is the indifference to the political life. It concerns people which are not really inserted in the society (young people, housewives . ) They are not interested in the political life or think that their votes will not make any difference.(Vie Publique, 2006) Active abstention is the protesting form of the abstention. [...]