Young voters a key electorate

Youths hold the power to influence the outcome of elections throughout the world, recent trends seem to show. This follows the game changing power the youth vote displayed in the United States of America, and most recently Zambia .  

In the 2008 US presidential election, young people voted for Barack Obama by a far wider margin than voters in other age groups. Even the republicans acknowledged the significance of the Obama campaign’s focus on mobilising the youth vote, with some supporters suggesting that perhaps that is what their party needed to do. Some people have argued that any state where the popular-vote tally was close is probably a state where the youth vote made a difference.

In recent years, several organizations have led aggressive efforts to increase youth turnout as citizens under 30 have traditionally had the lowest participation rates throughout the world. Reasons for the poor youth turnout range from unfamiliarity with the voter-registration process, lack of confidence in the electoral system, to not having the same stake in the political system that older voters do.

 The 2011 Zambian election showed the same trend with analysts saying that Sata’s victory was won on the backs of disillusioned ‘swing voters’ and strong support from the one million new youth voter bloc.

Banda’s thwarted re-election was said to potentially send signals to other beleaguered incumbents who were facing tough upcoming re-election battles to focus on the youth vote. In his electoral victory, Zambian President Michael Sata gave indicators that if candidates manage to tap into that youth, getting them to come out and vote, then they are going to start winning elections. This is perhaps the reason why with looming elections, young Zimbabweans have suddenly become the centre of attraction to political parties, with ZANU PF using the indegenisation programme to lure their votes.          

Basing on the fact that Africa is the most youth full continent, with statistics indicating that about 65% of the total population of Africa is below the age of 35 years, and over 35% are between the ages of 15 and 35 years, it is only natural that populists direct their efforts towards winning this critical group. It is projected that by 2020, out of 4 people, 3 will be on average 20 years old.

More recently, young Taiwanese also played a greater role in the presidential campaign in this year’s presidential polls than in previous polls, while both the main political parties; the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) worked towards winning the youth vote. According to Taiwanese Ministry of the Interior statistics, there were about 1.2 million first-time voters who took part in the election, while the number of voters aged between 20 and 29 was 3.46 million. To attract voters in this age group, the two major political parties recruited young people to play key roles in their election campaigns.    

However, the approach most have taken is that reaching out to the youth is really something they only do during election campaigns. As such young people need to be wary of false promises that are meant to do no more than win their vote. There are issues that mostly affect young people and need to take priority to whoever claims to be for the youths. Issues such as unemployment remain a challenge even for countries such as South Africa, whose youth unemployment rate stands at 50 percent despite the fact that it is the continent’s biggest economy.

Young Zimbabweans therefore, need to take part in electoral processes in their numbers but still need to be conscious of the fact that some politicians want to use them for cheap political gains. Desisting from politically motivated violence is one of many ways they can shun such abuse by politicians.