Do young people vote less? Yes, but…

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By Ro­drigo Ibar­rola

The low vot­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple un­der 30 is fre­quently men­tioned as one of the rea­sons why elec­toral re­sults al­ways end up fa­vor­ing party struc­tures. In this hy­poth­e­sis, it is stated -al­most mys­ti­cally- that if young peo­ple were to achieve a higher level of par­tic­i­pa­tion, pro­fes­sional politi­cians would be dis­placed. This is not a be­lief that only ex­ists in our coun­try. Nei­ther is the lower rel­a­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of the young pop­u­la­tion in elec­tions. On the con­trary, it is a com­mon phe­nom­e­non that oc­curs both in democ­ra­cies that we would con­sider well-grounded and in those that are not.

It is true that if we look at the 18 to 29 age group, we will ob­serve that peo­ple of that age pre­sent a lower par­tic­i­pa­tion com­pared to the gen­eral par­tic­i­pa­tion (Graph 1). How­ever, in the over­all, it is the age group that con­tributes the high­est num­ber of votes. So, the quick an­swer to the ques­tion of whether young peo­ple vote is: yes, but there are still is­sues to con­sider. For ex­am­ple, what do we con­sider low par­tic­i­pa­tion? As­sum­ing as an ideal the over­all par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, the level of par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple is clearly be­low av­er­age.

One might think that the in­hab­i­tants of rich and highly de­mo­c­ra­tic coun­tries are more likely to vote. Cer­tainly, this is true in coun­tries such as Swe­den, Den­mark, the Nether­lands, South Ko­rea (with turnout rates above 76% in their last elec­tions). How­ever, there are also coun­tries such as Switzer­land, New Zealand, Fin­land, Chile, United King­dom (with turnout be­low 52%). Paraguay is lo­cated with 53%. There­fore, as has been said, low turnout is not a phe­nom­e­non ex­clu­sive to Paraguayans. There­fore, it is worth ask­ing our­selves -be­yond the fact that it is morally and eth­i­cally de­sir­able- if the qual­ity of democ­racy (or al­ter­na­tion) re­ally de­pends or not on the youth vote. A dif­fi­cult ques­tion to an­swer, and one that re­quires an­other type of analy­sis.

Graph 1. Par­tic­i­pa­tion of 18- to -29 year old’s in gen­eral elec­tions, 2003-2018. As a per­cent­age of 18- to 29-year-olds en­rolled in the RCP

Source: Own, with data from the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE).

On the other hand, it is note­wor­thy that elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion has been in­creas­ing over time (along with the reg­is­tered pop­u­la­tion). This phe­nom­e­non is reg­is­tered in both gen­eral and mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions (Fig­ure 2), al­though a cycli­cal be­hav­ior can be glimpsed, since in the lat­ter -gen­er­ally- lower lev­els are reg­is­tered than in the gen­eral elec­tions.

Graph 2.To­tal elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion in gen­eral and mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions, 2001-2021. As a per­cent­age of to­tal num­ber of per­sons reg­is­tered in the RCP

Source: Own, with data from the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE).

Com­par­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion recorded in the 2003 and 2018 elec­tions, and dis­ag­gre­gat­ing by age, we can see that the growth in par­tic­i­pa­tion has not been sim­i­lar in all age groups. Fig­ure 3 shows the break­down in ten cat­e­gories, where the 18 to 24 years old age group is the one that reg­is­tered the high­est de­crease, with a neg­a­tive vari­a­tion of 17%.

Graph 3. Vari­a­tion in voter turnout be­tween 2003 and 2018 gen­eral elec­tions by age. As a per­cent­age of per­sons reg­is­tered in the RCP by age group

Source: Own, with data from the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE).

But there is a de­tail to con­sider: in 2012, au­to­matic reg­is­tra­tion was im­ple­mented for those young peo­ple who turned 18 years old, which af­fected the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in the un­der-30 age group. Given that au­to­matic reg­is­tra­tion op­er­ates re­gard­less of the in­ten­tion of young peo­ple to vote or not, a lower turnout was to be ex­pected, as the base of el­i­gi­ble vot­ers in­creased dis­pro­por­tion­ately.

What does result is classroom teaching practices that allow young people to debate and learn about contemporary political issues. Active involvement in these issues before the age of 18 increases the likelihood of voting. It also allows young people to increase their knowledge and develop skills such as, for example, communicating effectively with someone who has different views, developing a young person’s confidence in their own ability to participate.

A sim­ple way to cor­rect this dis­tor­tion is to cal­cu­late par­tic­i­pa­tion in re­la­tion to the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion of each age group for each given year and not in re­la­tion to those reg­is­tered in the na­tional cen­sus, that is, to ad­just it by pop­u­la­tion, since we know that not all the pop­u­la­tion is reg­is­tered in the Per­ma­nent Civic Reg­istry (RCP). Once this ad­just­ment is made (Graph 4), the youngest age group was the one with the high­est in­crease in elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion. This is ex­plained by the fact that the in­crease in RCP reg­is­tra­tion is sig­nif­i­cantly cor­re­lated with the in­crease in elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion in this age group. In fact, the elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple is a di­rect re­sult of the num­ber of young peo­ple reg­is­tered. The causes have to do with the elim­i­na­tion of bu­reau­cratic bar­ri­ers for reg­is­tra­tion and, there­fore, also for par­tic­i­pa­tion.

Fig­ure 4. Vari­a­tion in voter turnout be­tween 2003 and 2018 gen­eral elec­tions by age. As a per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion by age group

Source: Pre­pared by the au­thors with data from the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE) and the Na­tional Sta­tis­tics In­sti­tute (INE).

Re­turn­ing to peo­ple un­der 30, in Fig­ure 5, we can see that, as the num­ber of reg­is­tered vot­ers rises, the line of elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion cal­cu­lated on pop­u­la­tion also rises steadily, un­like the line cal­cu­lated from the na­tional cen­sus, which suf­fers a drop af­ter 2013. With this we ver­ify that the “real” par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple, far from de­creas­ing, has in­creased steadily from 2003 on­wards. Ad­di­tion­ally, it is also ob­served that both lines tend to con­verge be­cause the pro­por­tion of reg­is­tered per­sons in re­la­tion to the pop­u­la­tion of that age has gone from 60% in 2001 to 94% in 2021.

Fig­ure 5. Voter turnout and num­ber of reg­is­tered vot­ers aged 18 to 29 years old. As a per­cent­age of RCP en­rollees and pop­u­la­tion

Source: Pre­pared by the au­thors with data from the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE) and the Na­tional Sta­tis­tics In­sti­tute (INE).

A not mi­nor de­tail is that in 2021, thanks to the com­pe­ti­tion among can­di­dates in the lists caused by the un­block­ing, a trend that had been con­stant since 2001 has been bro­ken. For the first time, youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions ex­ceeded the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate of the pre­vi­ous gen­eral elec­tion (Fig­ure 6). This oc­curs re­gard­less of whether the ref­er­ence taken is the na­tional cen­sus or the pop­u­la­tion. This phe­nom­e­non raises hopes of ob­serv­ing a high youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in next year’s gen­eral elec­tions, a very im­por­tant as­pect since young peo­ple make up 31% of the elec­torate (1,457,822 vot­ers), of which 53% are in­de­pen­dent, ac­cord­ing to the na­tional elec­toral roll of Oc­to­ber 2021.

Fig­ure 6. Elec­toral par­tic­i­pa­tion of peo­ple aged be­tween 18 and 29. As a per­cent­age of pop­u­la­tion

Source: Pre­pared by the au­thors with data from the Su­pe­rior Court of Elec­toral Jus­tice (TSJE) and the Na­tional Sta­tis­tics In­sti­tute (INE).

The above al­lows us to re­fute the idea that younger vot­ers, ei­ther be­cause of dis­in­ter­est or ap­a­thy, are vot­ing less and less. Al­though this group con­tin­ues to have a lower-than-av­er­age par­tic­i­pa­tion, it is worth not­ing that it has been the one with the great­est in­crease, sig­nif­i­cantly nar­row­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion gaps.

What can be done to en­cour­age vot­ing? Some of it has al­ready been done. With au­to­matic reg­is­tra­tion, the bar­ri­ers for reg­is­tra­tion have been re­moved, ob­sta­cles that dis­pro­por­tion­ately af­fect young peo­ple, since the avail­able ev­i­dence sug­gests that they are the most likely to de­sist from vot­ing in the face of these in­con­ve­niences. With that hur­dle re­moved, many are now able to do so. And they do, as the ev­i­dence and the grow­ing num­bers in our coun­try show, af­ter the im­ple­men­ta­tion of au­to­matic reg­is­tra­tion.

But ease of reg­is­tra­tion is not every­thing. An­other rel­e­vant is­sue -with a long-term ef­fect on the pro­mo­tion of suf­frage- is civic ed­u­ca­tion. But not as it is im­ple­mented to­day, re­duced to a mere mem­o­riza­tion ex­er­cise of his­tor­i­cal facts, civic norms, and gov­ern­ment rules. Ex­ist­ing re­search shows that this ap­proach sim­ply does not yield greater civic en­gage­ment. What does re­sult is class­room teach­ing prac­tices that al­low young peo­ple to de­bate and learn about con­tem­po­rary po­lit­i­cal is­sues. Ac­tive in­volve­ment in these is­sues be­fore the age of 18 in­creases the like­li­hood of vot­ing. It also al­lows young peo­ple to in­crease their knowl­edge and de­velop skills such as, for ex­am­ple, com­mu­ni­cat­ing ef­fec­tively with some­one who has dif­fer­ent views, de­vel­op­ing a young per­son’s con­fi­dence in their own abil­ity to par­tic­i­pate.

We have then that com­bin­ing au­to­matic reg­is­tra­tion with a teach­ing method that fa­cil­i­tates the civic par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple from the class­room can be valu­able for later par­tic­i­pa­tion. Af­ter all, vot­ing is a habit that must be en­cour­aged and, like any rou­tine, the most dif­fi­cult mo­ments are the ini­tial ones.

Cover im­age: New York Times