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Voting: An important habit

Therese Arseneau

Dr. Therese Arseneau lectures in New Zealand politics and is a senior fellow in the School of Political Science and Communication at the University of Canterbury.

Her specialty is elections and the MMP electoral system.

Therese is also a political analyst for TVNZ and will be part of their election night team.

Read Therese's TVNZ blog

Voting is one of the most important things you will ever do, argues Dr Therese Arseneau of Canterbury University.


Every three years you have a chance to be heard.  You help pick who will represent you in Parliament.  You also judge the Government on its performance.  You can pat them on the back and vote to re-elect them.  Or you can decide to fire them and vote for a different Government. 

So voting is one of the most important things you will ever do.  But fewer and fewer New Zealanders are doing it. 

In 1935 around 92% of New Zealand voters turned up to vote.  By 1972 it was down to 80%, and in 2002 around 72%. A large chunk of these non-voters are younger people. 

Declining youth voting is the trend in New Zealand and internationally as well. Figure 1 (below) shows that in New Zealand elections since 1987, 25 – 40% of eligible voters under the age of 25 did not vote.  It also shows the sizeable gap between voters under and over the age of 25: voters over the age of 25 are much more likely to vote.

Non-voting by age (in %)

Non Voting by Age in per cent

2008 election

It looks like youth non-voting will be high in this year’s general election too.  At present over 100,000 young voters still haven’t enrolled to vote.  That’s 1 in 4 of 18- to 24-year-olds. Rising youth non-voting rates are cause for concern. 

Voting or non-voting is habit forming.  If young voters skip their first election they are more likely to skip their second and third elections as well.  They often become non-voters for life. 

iVoteHow to enrol

Enrolling is easy. Enrolment forms are available from Burger King, or by Freetexting your name and address to 3676.

You can also head to www.elections.org.nz, visit any PostShop or call 0800 ENROL NOW (0800 36 76 56). 

More information about enrolling and voting is available from www.elections.org.nz or www.ivotenz.org.nz.

Reasons young people don't vote

So why are younger New Zealanders not voting?  The Electoral Commission asked them this question and got some interesting answers:

Democracy needs you

A healthy democracy needs people to participate.  And if we want the current crop of under-25 year olds to be voting when they are middle-aged, something needs to be done now.
Here are a few suggestions:

August 2008