Why political parties must find way of mobilising youth to vote
What you need to know:
- The groups should, therefore, audit how they and their candidates engage young people.
- Then they will identify best practices and document lessons learnt from these efforts so that there can be continuous improvement.
Statistics indicate that 51 per cent of registered voters in Kenya are youth between the ages of 18 and 35 years. This means the youth constitute about 9.9 million voters.
This is not just a statistic. The question is, why do young people vote or not vote and what can be done to involve today’s youth in the electoral process?
The increasing reluctance among the youth to participate in politics and exercise their right to vote is particularly alarming. Relevant institutions must be deliberate about identifying possible solutions in the form of innovative ideas and concrete programmes to raise youth interest and participation.
Some of the reasons revealed as to why young people do not vote is disillusionment with the political system, political parties and candidates. Our argument is that there is a lot of information from various parties but political parties have a lot to learn about appealing to a young audience.
RAISE AWARENESS
Young people, although pessimistic and critical, are concerned and full of ideas and eager to participate, if conditions were to change.
As a country, we must raise awareness to young people that elections play a critical role in ensuring representative democracy and that if they are involved in the electoral process they affirm their support and appreciation that they have what it takes to affect politics and policy.
It is a fact that young people have differing political interests from those of older voters and if they do not vote their distinct interests are more likely to be ignored by policymakers.
There is no universal formula for ensuring youth involvement in politics because the social, cultural and political context varies, hence the need for adaptation. Appropriate use of media messages allows messages to be conveyed to large audience. The secret however, is packaging the message that is sent out to young people. Investing in a civil infrastructure is important this year. This is about investment in the development of thousands of young people equipped with the skills and leadership ability to mobilise people and develop leadership at their local level. This way, they will be able to carry out door-to-door campaigns to talk to potential young voters.
Political parties can also rely on cell phones to reach those hard to contact youthful populations with a view of creating a database where they can send alerts.
In some countries, parties and candidates make special efforts to reach out to newly-enfranchised voters and extend a hearty welcome to full citizenship. Political leaders place and keep youth issues on the public agenda by scheduling debates and promulgating a “National Youth Voting Awareness Day”.
Political leaders must reject the temptation to ignore youth engagement and mobilisation strategies based on the argument that the youth are simply tuned off and not interested in voting. In some cases, they may not be interested in hierarchical forms of participation (such as involvement with a political party). This does not mean a rejection of politics per se.
As such, political parties must organise themselves to mobilise the youth by reaching out to them.
Interest aggregation is a must consideration to ensure that the preferences of the youth are identified and isolated and then used to craft a broad public appeal.
THEIR OBJECTIVES
We want to be quick to say that political parties’ fulfilment of these functions is shaped in practice by their respective objectives as well as the decisions they take on how to allocate their limited resources.
Currently there is no clear understanding of how parties engage the youth in between elections. The effectiveness of existing youth engagement strategies is even less well-understood. However, research demonstrates that mobilisation tactics can be effective in reaching young voters.
The debate arises over the precise motivating messaging used. Political parties should, therefore, audit how they and their candidates engage the youth. By doing so, they will identify best practices and document lessons learnt from these efforts so that there can be continuous improvement.
Dr Kellen Kiambati is a management consultant and lecturer at Karatina University.
Dr Anne Kariuki is a social scientist, management consultant and lecturer at Karatina University.
