ABSTRACT
Having considered various aspects of the electoral process so far — the campaign, the ways in which ordinary people talk about politics and politicians, voting day, the experience of voting, the role that officials play in conducting the elections, and the shared feeling of communitas that elections in all their carnivalesque nature bring — we can turn our attention to the reasons that voters cite for why they vote. ‘Why do people vote?’ was one of the key research questions that this project explored and the results of what people said when asked this question are presented in this chapter. By evaluating the answers we aim to get a better grasp of the meaning that a vote holds for people and thereby hope to strengthen our understanding of one of the least understood, yet key, aspects of a more substantive view of politics and elections.
