participation crisis??

Question 1

turnout has fallen

Answer 1

average turnout 1945 to 1997 76%
post 2001 results consistently below 70

Question 2

by election with low turnout

Answer 2

wellingborough (peter bone’s old constituency) 2024 38 percent

rochdale by election (george galloway!!!!) had 40 percent turnout but 60 percent turnout at last ge

Question 3

args re compulsory voting?

Answer 3

intent: don’t have compulsory voting

-increases turnout and legitimacy
-however, more importantly uninformed voting
-judgement: the numbers may look better but if the voting is uninformed it isn’t really representative so is meaningless

-hurts the chances of extremist parties
-however, more importantly marginalises the most politically engaged
-judgement: extremist parties don’t have that much impact bc of fptp so this isn’t a big issue

Question 4

eval the view that referendums do more to help than hinder british democracy

Answer 4

-places too much power in unenlightened hands

-prima facie more representative
-however, undermines representative democracy

Question 5

eval the view that media has had a substantial influence on elections since 1997

Answer 5

intent: no, it hasn’t

-print media seems to have influence
-but shrinking influence (in numbers and impact)

-tv debates seem to play a role in education
-however, shrinking influence

-social media seems to play a role in education too
-however, small influence (as of now)

-conclusion: anticipate growing influence of impact of social media without regulation
-social media and tv are much more impactful than print, social media esp with research into making it drill ads into our brains
-but right now still can’t be judged to be significant

Question 6

youth reliance on social media

Answer 6

-79 percent 18-19 relied almost totally on online sources
-59 relied on social media to discover other opinions

Question 7

social media impactful bc unregulated

Answer 7

-not regulated therefore abuse, cambridge analytica, mined 100k facebook users to taarget political advertising

Question 8

statistic that young don’t vote now

Answer 8

-young vote don’t vote, most apathetic 25 perentage point gap young to old turnout 2019

-54 percent turnout 18-24

Question 9

high spend on social media

Answer 9

-con 100k per month 2019
-lab 1.9m facebook 2019

Question 10

tv debate significant

Answer 10

-tv debates education, clegg nom nom nom ate up the labour votes, like pac man, “I agree with nick”
-sun/yougov poll 51 percent said clegg was the star of the show

-may sent amber rudd to debate for her, and had a bad 2017

Question 11

tv viewership

Answer 11

LOW!!! -`. tv debates not significant
47 percent

Question 12

tv regulation

Answer 12

-ofcom regulation means e.g. bbc amount of time for party political broadcast reflects seats in commons time to the minute, tight regulations
-heightened by fptp, seats dont reflect votes

Question 13

print media significant (reel off examples sami!!!) (numbers)

Answer 13

-‘sun backs blair’, ‘if kinnock wins’, sun has only backed winners since 70s, correlation explain by causation (media motivates voting)

-3.9m sun, 2.4m daily mail -> large readership
-however qualify: mail online 4.1m views daily

-political leaders recognise importance, e.g. blair dinner australia, starmer did same

Question 14

print media readership

Answer 14

2.4m -> 909k daily mail now

3.9m -> 1.4m sun

this shows lower number of people affected by these messages

Question 15

evidence for reinforcement theory

Answer 15

kinnock’s longest suicide note in history led to headline ‘if kinnock wins today…’

murdoch chanigng positions for blair, ‘sun backs blair’, bc obviously those positions would be popular