Low Youth Voter Turnout in Canada

2087 Words9 Pages
For decades now most democracies have stood by and watched as the voter turnout among youths has steadily decreased. This presents a major problem to democracies around the world as youths are not being properly represented thanks to the declining percentage of participants. In Canada’s 2008 federal election only 37 percent of the general population ages 18-24 participated (Barnes, 2010). This diminishing voter turnout among the youth can be explained by examining contributing factors such as the post-materialist values of this generation in a world where politicians cater to the materialistic values of the generations before them. Other factors include a lack of political knowledge and interest among the young due to a belief that certain political issues do not affect them, as well as low internal and external efficacy that afflicts today’s young voters. In order to rectify this problem governments should be prepared to adapt their policies and platforms to fit the current values of the young or attempt to enforce compulsory voting upon the general population. Over the last few generations there has been a shift from materialistic values, such as material needs and safety, to post-materialistic values, such as freedom and tolerance. This generational shift has resulted in youths who tend to focus more on issues such as tolerance and environmentalism rather than the issues that most politicians base their platforms on such as economic stability and security. The reason that politicians don’t cater to these post-materialistic values is the overwhelming number of voters who value materialism over post-materialism. The creator of the post-materialism theory, Ronald Inglehart, found that the values of each generation were defined by something he called formative events, that is to say the shared common and distinctive experiences of a generation (1990). The more
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