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The decline in voter turnout in liberal democracies is not new. The 1940s in Canada, when more than 80% of voters fulfilled their civic duty during provincial or federal elections, seem a long time ago.
“It was the golden age of our democracy,” explains Professor Marc André Bodet, of the Department of Political Science. We could easily regularly reach above 80% participation. Today, we are much closer to 55% to 65%.”
Professor Bodet participated in a research project on the evolution of electoral participation in Canada from the perspective of the compression of electoral cycles, a study whose results have just been published in the international journal Representation. Journal of Representative Democracy.
“The period that we have chosen to study begins in the mid-1940s when the electorate becomes universal, when the provincial electorates become the same, Quebec being the last province to grant the right to vote to women,” continues the teacher. We can generalize the period of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s to the entire democratic world as a sort of golden age. Since then, we have witnessed a slow and systematic decline in electoral participation across the world.”
According to researchers, the most important explanatory factor for this phenomenon is the generational effect. “Older voters who die are replaced by young voters who, today, vote less,” he says. For example, an 18-year-old voter in 1970 had a much better chance of voting than an 18-year-old voter today.”
But another factor would be part of the equation: the closer frequency of electoral meetings. This phenomenon would tend to further reduce the motivation to vote. “Our study,” he adds, “clearly shows the current existence of a fatigue effect among voters.”
Data analysis reveals that more voters in Alberta and Ontario have voted in federal elections than in provincial elections since 1945. On the other hand, voters in Quebec and Newfoundland have always been more people to vote in provincial elections. The average gap between two elections in Canada today is 91 months.
A federated state
Just like New Zealand or Switzerland, Canada is a federated state made up of several autonomous entities, each with their own government. But the best example in this area remains the United States. “The American case is always the one cited,” emphasizes Marc André Bodet. Every two years, they hold “general” elections for the House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress. There are also the presidential primaries which are very popular. The Americans are still in electoral mode.”
That said, the Canadian case is unique. “From the federal level to the municipal level,” he said, “partisan life is different, the parties that run are not the same from one level to another. There is no vertical integration, with the exception of the New Democratic Party.”
The professor returns to the particular political context constituted by the 1995 referendum on the Quebec sovereignty project. Remember that 93.5% of voters exercised their right to vote on October 30. “It was a pivotal moment in the history of the Quebec people with an extremely high participation rate,” he recalls. But this result did not change the voters. Many people returned to the electoral game on this occasion before disappearing after the Quebec general election in 1998.”
The study reveals that, since the 1940s, Quebec has done a little better than the other Canadian provinces in terms of electoral participation. “We are less bad than the others,” he maintains. This can be explained by the right to vote granted to women in 1940 and the effect of which has lasted.
Early elections
One of the causes of the decline in citizen interest in the electoral process is the recourse, by minority governments, to early elections. This type of election is called before the end of a government mandate. “Minority governments feel in a position of strength and call elections to take advantage of their advantage,” explains Marc André Bodet. Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien, at one time, and Pauline Marois, more recently, both at the head of a minority government, did so. However, these early elections tend to create a negative effect among the electorate. They desynchronize electoral cycles and, through accumulation, induce voter fatigue.”
Of the 8 federal elections held in the 21st century in Canada, only 3 produced majority governments.
According to the professor, this phenomenon is becoming more and more frequent. “If we look over time, we should have more and more elections,” he says. Let’s just think about the Canadian federal elections. There was one in 2018 and one in 2021, all ending in a minority government. It is not impossible that there will be one in 2025. Minority governments tend to accelerate the process in the direction of parliamentary instability. If electoral participation is an indicator of our democratic health, we can therefore consider that growing voter fatigue represents bad news.”
The legitimacy mechanism
What would be the long-term consequences of an increasingly marked decline in voter turnout? “Above 50% participation,” replies Marc André Bodet, “we are still in a legitimacy mechanism. Afterwards, if participation drops to 40% or 30%, we will have questions to ask ourselves. The professor cites as an example the abolition of school elections in Quebec. “Voter participation had dropped considerably over the years,” he recalls. These elections no longer had any meaning in terms of legitimacy. The danger is to find ourselves in municipal, provincial or federal elections where the people who decide not to vote are systematically more numerous than those who decide to participate. There, we fall into a more dangerous space where those who begin to challenge the legitimacy of the parties in power will have arguments in their favor.”
According to him, the countries where electoral participation holds up better are those where voting is compulsory, such as in Belgium or Australia, or those which have the multi-member proportional voting system, such as Finland or Portugal. “Electoral participation is good in Belgium and Australia,” he emphasizes, “but since the penalties for those who do not vote have been eliminated, we have observed a drop in participation. We also know that countries which have a proportional voting system generally have higher participation rates than those which have the majority voting system.
Populist movements
The professor sees several points in common between Canada and Spain, two federated states of which part of the territory is occupied by a people with a desire for emancipation, namely Quebec and Catalonia. According to him, Spain is a good comparative case with its lower voter turnout and close elections. “For a long time,” he said, “both countries seemed protected from populist movements. But with the appearance of the far-right party Vox in Spain and that of the People’s Party of Canada led by Maxime Bernier, the dam is broken. In comparative politics, it is often said that Spain and Italy are at the forefront of political trends. All kinds of trends come from these two countries. The first Donald Trump was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The first populist parties appeared in Italy.”
The other collaborators on this research project are Alex B. Rivard, first author, and Véronique Boucher-Lafleur. Alex B. Rivard was a postdoctoral researcher at Laval University at the time of writing the article. He is now an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University. Véronique Boucher-Lafleur, for her part, was enrolled in a master’s degree in political science at Laval University. She is now a research agent at the National Assembly of Quebec.
