ABSTRACT
Citizens with the greatest sense of alienation and cynicism towards political participation, who are more likely to become the non-voluntary absent voter, have become associated, according to Johnston and Pattie (in A Nation Dividing?, 1988), with the most deprived sections of society. It is the citizens who are the most marginalised in society and who tend to view any political activity as being largely irrelevant that have by far the lowest rates of political participation. This view was confirmed when Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking, the 24th most deprived area in the UK with the lowest average take-home earnings in London, interviewed citizens who had either voted in 1997 but not in 2001 or never voted. Her research found that citizens were not apathetic or disengaged from political issues but believed their concerns were not seen as important to politicians. For many of these citizens, the decision not to vote was their only way of expressing their alienation. As one citizen said in her interview, If enough people don’t vote, they may start thinking-hang on, maybe we ought to change the way we’ve been doing things’.
