Voter Alienation

VOTER ALIENATION IS a political phenomenon occurring in electoral politics as a result of a majority of voters feeling as though the major political parties no longer represent citizens' mainstream issues and values. Consequently, voter alienation is closely linked to voter turnout. Voter alienation signals that everyday citizens no longer feel connected to politics and, therefore, decide that it is no longer in their interest to participate in politics. Alienated voters believe that their vote will not make any difference, that politics has little influence in their lives, and that the main parties do not address their concerns.

In the United States, voter alienation has occurred twice in recent history, in the 1960s and the 1990s. Voter alienation may raise serious concerns about the ability of political parties to represent and aggregate the interests of citizens'. Voter alienation is related to voter apathy and a general distrust of politics at the national level, which is indicated by voter turnout. Three schools of thought explain voter turnout: rational choice theories, sociological theories, and theories of political efficacy. Rational choice theorists argue that voters weigh [Page 828]the costs and benefits of their actions; voters will turn up to vote when they consider that the benefits of voting outweigh the costs of voting. Sociological theorists argue that socioeconomic class determines party identification and propensity to vote. Elites, including those with education beyond high school and voters of high socioeconomic class are more likely to vote and feel as if their vote matters. Political efficacy theorists argue that people alienated from the political process are less likely to vote. In order for citizens to turnout to vote and participate they must feel that their votes have an impact.

Voter turnout in presidential elections in the past two decades has been relatively low, averaging about 52 percent, down from a high of 63 percent in 1960. Turnout in off-year congressional elections has been much lower, hovering around 40 percent. The number of voters registered as Independents or with third parties has more than tripled during the last 30 years, to just under 13 percent, and Independent voters are the fastest-growing voter group.

Although many scholars argue that voter alienation is a signal that political parties are not performing as they should, citizens' participation in electoral politics at the local and state levels of government has increased, while participation in national-level elections has declined. Furthermore, voter alienation may have more to do with the horizontal and vertical distribution of authority in a political system, or institutional design, than anything about the general population of a country. Electoral systems, which are single-member district pluralities and produce catchall parties, may not capture the interest of citizens or represent citizens as well as proportional representation or mixed models, which foster more ideologically distinct political parties.

There is disagreement among scholars of electoral politics in the United States on the issue of voter alienation. For example, McDonald and Popkin (2001) attribute the apparent decline in turnout rate since 1972 to the increasing number of ineligible persons counted among the voting-age population, which is the denominator for the calculations by the Bureau of the Census. The causes for voter alienation, and its indicator, low voter turnout, has a number of supposed causes: economic decline, divided government, negative campaigning, the realignment of parties, and declining civic engagement are the most prominent. However, there may be alternative explanations for lower turnout in America, when compared with other industrial democracies, which have more to do with the way that U.S. political institutions are designed. Parliamentary systems that possess proportional representation or mixed electoral systems, produce strong national parties. In political systems where the national government possesses the most power and lower levels implement its decisions, responsibility for government performance is clear-cut, as is accountability. In federal systems, responsibility is divided between state and national governments, and in the United States, among two legislatures, and an executive at each level. Federalism and the separation of powers increase the costs to voters to gather and process the information about candidates and elections. Researching the proposals for a given issue and registration are neither done by the government nor are they compulsory. Moreover, the frequent primary and general elections required to fill the many elected offices increase the burden of democracy for the voter. The other two industrialized democracies with chronically low turnout rates are Switzerland and Japan, countries with diffused lines of authority and responsibility.

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