Politics

Number of Don't Voters surpasses Tory and Labour support with 30% to avoid ballots


There’s a sure-fire way of making sure you’re on the ­winning side when the polls close this Thursday.

But it’s not one that anyone who considers themselves a democrat should be proud of.

The “winning party” in all recent elections, and this is the third in five years, is the DVs – the Don’t Voters.

They represent more than either Labour or Tory.

Around a third of those eligible and registered to vote can’t be bothered to place their X in the box.

Whether it’s cynicism, apathy, ­arrogance, laziness or none of the above, a potentially decisive number of people are, by historical standards, expected to check out of making a choice in an election which will shape the future of Britain for a generation.

A potentially decisive number of voters are expected not to check in for decision that will shape next generation
A potentially decisive number of voters are expected not to check in

Just by not checking in.

It could make such a difference if they, or even a proportion of them, did.

Take Boris Johnson ’s own seat of Uxbridge. (I hope somebody does.)

He held it with what would once have been seen as a safe majority of 5,034 after 23,760 voters plumped for him at the ballot box in 2017.

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But almost as many – 22,798 of registered voters – did not take part. That’s just 962 fewer than voted for Mr Johnson.

No wonder Labour ­activists are pouring in to unseat a sitting Prime Minister for the first time since 1931.

Uxbridge is just outside the 142 seats where there are more DVs than people who voted for the sitting MP.

Boris Johnson's Uxbridge seat once used to be safe but 22,798 of voters did not show up
Boris Johnson’s Uxbridge seat once used to be safe but 22,798 of voters did not show up

And in 551 of Parliament’s 650 seats – 80 per cent – the number of DVs exceeds the majority of the sitting MP.

If these figures don’t cause alarm you are ­probably one of those don’t-care DVs.

In too many cases – 14 million – voters live in seats that haven’t changed hands since the last world war. So people think their vote doesn’t, or won’t, make a ­difference.

They have a point. But in many cases their votes really could make a difference.

In 11 seats, a potentially prevailing majority in a possible hung Parliament, the majority is fewer than 100 votes.

Jeremy Corbyn and Labour supporters are pouring in to unseat the prime minister
Jeremy Corbyn and Labour supporters are pouring in to unseat the prime minister

Proportional representation has been raised as a solution.

But when that was put to the vote in a 2011 referendum it was decisively rejected on a turnout of 42 per cent.

Compulsory voting has been floated as a solution to voter turnout, which is in decline.

Of 22 countries where it applies – including Australia, Austria and Belgium – only half enforce it.

Here there is a very British resentment against compulsion of any sort.

The only way to ensure fuller ­participation in the choice of who runs the country is to appeal to the ­responsibility and duty of voters to take a material part in that decision.

If people choose to remain in the “unheard third” they have no right to whinge when a government does things they don’t like.

Nor if there comes a point when we have to ask: Whatever did happen to that old thing called democracy?





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