Bryce Edwards: Designer politics a real turn-off for the nation's voters

NZ has high voter participation. Photo / Martin Sykes

Are you going to bother voting this Saturday? If not, you're hardly alone. It's looking like fewer than three out of four eligible voters will actually make the trip to the polling booth. If that happens, this election risks having the lowest voter turnout for a century.

Historically, New Zealand has very high levels of voter participation - for much of the 20th century more than 90 per cent of eligible voters would turn out on election day. But this has declined considerably in recent elections. At the 2002 election, only 72.5 per cent of those eligible decided to cast a vote, and this year it's likely to fall to at least that level.

Already this year, voter enrolment numbers have been lower than usual. Despite enrolment being compulsory, only 93 per cent of eligible voters have done so, down from 95 per cent in 2008. For those in the 18-24 age group, only 76 per cent have enrolled.

Why are so few likely to participate? This election campaign has been the most heavily stage-managed in living memory. Politicians and parties have been incredibly cautious, sticking to photo opportunities, publicity stunts and allowing little meaningful debate to occur. Today's designer politics, with its market research, spin-doctors and sound-bites, makes the parties all appear the same. Voters are entirely divorced from these highly professionalised parties and so it is no surprise that party membership is now only one-tenth of what it used to be.

The electoral deals in places such as Epsom also drive voting numbers down - because of their overtones of manipulation. Similarly, the teapot tape will have put voters off. The ongoing saga has epitomised what many voters dislike about politics - it is scrappy, insubstantial, trivial and unnecessarily conflictual.

What policy debate has occurred has been about austerity, with the various parties attempting to outbid one another on who can be the most economically responsible and fiscally conservative. This is hardly inspiring stuff. National will partially sell some energy assets, Labour will cut back on retirement entitlements and the Greens are desperate to prove that they can be as fiscally prudent as the rest.

Labour has pinned its hopes on scaring voters back into the fold on the basis of National's privatisation plans. But although National's plans are unpopular, voters also know that Labour's retention of full ownership of the energy companies doesn't make much difference. Labour insists on operating those assets on a purely market model rather than for any social reason and therefore, in practice, both ownership models lead to the same outcome: high electricity prices.

National's re-election bid has been on the basis of promising "more of the same". And lately its main argument has been the need to keep Winston Peters and Hone Harawira out of government. This negative approach will also drive down voter participation.

The Greens have been the big success story of the election - and this is partly because they pose as the anti-political voter option and therefore are likely to pick up a lot of support from voters wanting to tick a box saying "None of the above".

Does politics have to be reduced to a predictable soap opera with little substance? In this regard the Occupy movement is a useful comparison to the trivia of the election campaign. It is telling that a group of a few hundred protesters has been able to outdo politicians in raising real and meaningful questions in the mainstream media. Questions around inequality, economic instability and poverty are being addressed in light of the recent protests and not because of campaigning by mainstream politicians.

So is it a bad thing that so many of us won't vote on Saturday? A low voter turnout is not necessarily about apathy. Instead it indicates a lack of confidence in parliamentary politics. This hopefully sends a message to the political parties that voters are not content with what's on offer and that politics needs to change. There is strong evidence that citizens are still interested in politics and society but increasingly they just don't see how voting really changes anything. So instead of condemning the increasing number of those who choose not to vote, we should be trying to understand why it is they make that choice.