Local Elections Turnout

Next Thursday will see local government elections being held in most of England, both the high profile contest for London Mayor and the much less heralded contest for more than 3,300 seats on around 150 district and borough councils. Turnout will almost certainly be dire, as it nearly always is these days; last year it was 36% in the shire districts, 31% in the unitary authorities and just 26% in the metropolitan boroughs.

Turnout may be less of a problem in London, where the Mayoral election seems to have captured the imagination more than is usually the case with local elections, and where the free mailshot for mayoral candidates should also help. The latest ICM poll in the Evening Standard found 69% saying they are certain or fairly likely to vote, a 10-point increase in the last fortnight. That will probably be an overestimate: electors tend to overclaim their propensity to vote to a greater extent in local elections than in general elections, and in this case there is the further factor that half the voters say they are supporting Ken Livingstone, who without the backing of a party machine to organise canvassing and 'knocking-up' on the day will probably get a lower turnout of his supporters than would otherwise be the case. Nevertheless, turnout should comfortably exceed the figure of under 35% that was achieved at the borough elections two years ago.

What can be done to improve turnout? This year a number of councils are, for the first time, using powers recently granted to them to experiment with different means of making it easier to vote, in the hope that this will encourage citizens to exercise their democratic rights. In some, the polls will open a week early to cater for those who can't make it on the designated day; in others there will be travelling polling stations or polling stations in supermarkets. One council has wired up its polling stations so that it can try electronic voting. The intention is in the long run that any initiatives that are a clear success will be extended to future parliamentary elections as well.

It may be, of course, that some of these experiments are clear cut successes or clear cut failures; but just as likely is that the increase in turnout they produce, if any, will be so marginal that it won't really be clear if they work or not; there will always be alternative explanations for any minor 'blips' in the figures. A MORI survey for the Local Government Association in 1998 investigated non-voting in local elections and the appeal of various alternatives for facilitating voting, and it suggests that potential benefits might be real but small. When asked, 48% claimed "I always vote in local council elections" - considerably more than the turnout in any wave of council elections in recent years. Achieving a turnout of 48% would be a start - indeed, it would probably be justifiably considered a triumph; but we don't know which of the 48% do in fact vote, and which are simply expressing wishful thinking, and whether the two groups are similar or different.

Let us consider instead the next group, the 18% who say they "usually vote"; the obvious implication from the turnout figures is that in fact this group usually do not vote in local elections but probably do vote in general elections, so they are perhaps representative of the target sector of those electors who might realistically be persuaded to vote in local elections if only it were more convenient. Who are they? They include slightly more men than women, are considerably more likely to be aged 25-64 than either younger or older, and a little more likely than average to be in full-time employment, especially self-employed. They are found in all social classes though particularly among C1s (lower middle-class). All in all, the archetype of busy people with jobs or families to worry about and too many calls on their time to make a possibly lengthy trip to the polling station a high priority; one in five of them said they didn't believe voting in local elections would make a difference to local taxes and services, and one in ten that "My vote doesn't make any difference" and that "None of the parties stands for the policies I would like to see".

So, what would encourage this group to turn out? The LGA poll offered twelve possible options, and asked for each whether it would make respondents more or less likely to vote. By far the most popular option among the "usually votes" was voting from home using the telephone, which 54% thought would make it more likely that they would vote; voting from home via digital TV or the Internet was popular with 31%, but the massive increase in Internet use in the past couple of years may mean that this would also now have more impact than our 1998 poll suggests. Internet voting has been tried in the USA, achieving a considerable turnout boost in a primary election earlier this year, although of course it is open to the objection that it is potentially discriminatory by income. With access to telephones virtually universal, this option has a much more obvious appeal, and if the obvious problems of security and initial set-up costs can be overcome looks a much more obvious means of permanent long-term reform than tinkering with the details of voting time or polling station location which may only meet the short-term needs of particular social problems that may easily change in the future. While the experiments being tried next week are worthy and may succeed, we must surely eventually return to the question - should we stick with the existing system, based round the 120-year old habit of voting by making a physical mark on a piece of paper at a designated place on a designated day; or should elections take a leap into the electronic age? Both sides have a strong case; it is about time it was properly debated.