Huge voter turnout advantaging the incumbent
UG Pro-Chancellor, Dr. Prem Misir
UG Pro-Chancellor, Dr. Prem Misir

THIS year’s General and Regional Elections in Guyana remind me of the massive support Barack Obama received from young voters in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (Pew Center) found that 66% of the voters aged under 30 voted for Obama in 2008, increasing the gap between young voters and other age groups in any presidential election since the commencement of exit polling in 1972.

The Pew Center also found that young voters were more active in the campaign for Obama in 2008, and where almost a third of the young voters in battleground States attended a campaign event. The Pew Center also indicated that mobilisation was an important factor electorally influencing young voters, and about a quarter of young voters across the U.S. said they were contacted in person or by phone by the Obama campaign to come out and vote; and, indeed, this percentages were larger for key battleground States, where 54% of voters aged under 30 in Pennsylvania and 61% in Nevada said that the Obama campaign contacted them. The Obama campaign surgically used the get-out-the-vote strategy to woo young voters with great success through decimating the young voter apathy phenomenon.

When you consider that almost two-thirds of the voters are under the age of 35 in the 2015 General and Regional Elections in Guyana, it is hardly surprising that political parties would do what it takes to woo these people. Perhaps, for the first time in Guyana’s political history, the extraordinary focus on the under-35 voters has graduated to centre stage; and why not? Parties participate in elections to win, and if it means that the under-35 people would be the trump card for victory, so be it. But any party hoping to win in 2015 must do much more than wooing the under-35s to its side. Wooing is necessary but not sufficient!

And against a background of first-time voters, it is now well established in democracies that the very young vote less than the other age groups, as Bhatti and Hansen pointed out in presenting the literature in their 2012 study on first-time voters; they also mentioned the powerful influence of youth abstention and where ineffective youth mobilisation can have damaging effects on election results.

In this literature, too, Bhatti and Hansen noted that, in general, young voters go less to the polls than the other age groups; and among younger voters, they showed a strong negative relationship between the first years of eligibility to vote and turnout at the polls; that is, among younger voters, the lowest ages for voting (say 18, 19) tend to produce the highest turnout at the polls, and as the ages creep slightly upward (say 20, 21), the turnout tends to tilt downwardly.

But this voting behaviour may have to do with whether or not young voters are living at home with their parents. Bhatti and Hansen in their literature review further showed that young voters living at home are influenced by parents’ voting habits; if this voting habit is faded when young voters leave home, and they become increasingly influenced by their peers, then their turnout at the polls may not be so great. But peers may exert this negative influence on the turnout because of their minimum or zero exposure to meaningful political party organisation.
Nevertheless, this negative correlation between young voters and their turnout to vote may not hold in its entirety for Guyana. Indeed, sufficient focus and attention by political parties on young voters, living at home or not, in this Guyana election may throw out this finding, as the two main electoral contestants in Guyana, the PPP/C and APNU-AFC, both display visible youth entrenchment within their ranks at the level of party organisation.

But in terms of the proportions of young voters on the party lists of candidates, the PPP/C outshines APNU-AFC in the 2015 elections. For this reason, compared to APNU-AFC, the PPP/C may have a slight advantage to bring out its young voters. So whether young voters live at home or not, the influence of their peers on their turnout to vote will depend immensely on the impact of party organisation on their young lives.

Nonetheless, in Guyana, most if not all first-time eligible young voters living at home may vote in the tradition of their parents as is the case in most democracies; and contrary to some findings here, their voting habits may not change even if they are living away from home because the geographical distances in this country are too small to enable their peers to impact negatively, interactions between young voters and their parents.
In the end, however, it is the quality of the contact, whether in person or by telephone, that matters at the level of campaign. That is, how much reach the party-affiliated young voters have on the masses of politically-unaffiliated young voters. It is fascinating how Obama’s young campaigners (Democratic Party-affiliated young voters) touched the bases of large populations of politically-unaffiliated young voters. In this context, perhaps, Obama’s get-out-the-vote machine in the 2008 U.S. presidential election may have some relevance.
We have some insights from Grunwald’s piece (April 2, 2009) in the Time magazine, where he mentioned that Obama gathered 29 of the leading behavioural scientists in a Consortium of Behavioural Scientists. Obama’s Deputy Field Director Mike Moffo gave some guidelines and a script from this Consortium to the young campaigners, which had this singular message: “A Record Turnout Is Expected.”
Grunwald also noted that Psychologist Robert Cialdini and others found that an influential motivator to get citizens to vote was to say that everyone was doing it. “People want to do what they think others will do,” according to Cialdini. The message worked. In addition, Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez (2011) showed how the Obama web machine translated online activity to on-the-ground-activism, with a nationwide virtual organisation of more than 5 million campaign volunteers, thus: “…targeted messages facilitated by social media and Web 2.0 tools, Web-facilitated hosted meetings, the mobilisation of the Obama network of supporters, promoting active civic engagement, enabling peer-to-peer political campaigning, educating the public on issues and organisational strategies, enabling voters to make informed decisions, mobilising the ground game, Web-facilitated canvassing and phoning, and raising money.”
In this country, while bringing out young voters to vote may still be a challenge for several contestants, aspects of the online Obama-style get-out-the-vote machine are there for the takings. For me, however, the issue with young voters is to bring them out to vote, and not unduly be concerned about how they will vote. And a huge voter turnout will advantage the incumbent.
(Dr Misir’s new blogsite is: liberalmusingspost.wordpress.com and email address:
musingsgy@yahoo.com)

By Dr. Prem Misir

 

‘When you consider that almost two-thirds of the voters are under the age of 35 in the 2015 General and Regional Elections in Guyana, it is hardly surprising that political parties would do what it takes to woo these people. Perhaps, for the first time in Guyana’s political history, the extraordinary focus on the under-35 voters has graduated to centre stage; and why not? Parties participate in elections to win…’
‘In terms of the proportions of young voters on the party lists of candidates, the PPP/C outshines APNU-AFC in the 2015 elections’

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