Capturing the youth vote
Carl Stone, Contributor

Carl Stone

BECAUSE political power is so dominated by the older generation we often forget just how important a role young voters play in elections in Jamaica.

It is the trend in parliamentary elections, ever since the voting age was lowered to 18 by the PNP in the 1970s that there are some 30 per cent to 40 per cent of new voters added to the lists of voters at the constituency level.

These new voters play a decisive role in election outcomes. They determine more of the swing for or against political parties than older voters.

In the highly politicised climate of the 1970s political interest among younger voters peaked. As a consequence, the level of voting among young people increased considerably during that period.

In the 1972 elections that brought the PNP to power, many youngsters who had no votes pressured their parents into voting out Mr. Shearer's JLP.

Throughout the rural main road and urbanised areas outside of Kingston (and especially in the western parishes) a new wave of anti-JLP youth agitation helped to sweep out the JLP in that election. Prime Minister Hugh Shearer became a favourite target of their jeers and boos.

In the 1976 elections that returned the PNP to power for a second-term, it was the PNP's huge lead among younger voters that wiped out the deficits of PNP votes among older voters who were shifting in significant numbers to the JLP because of the fear of political instability and disorder that seemed to be accompanying the often strident declarations of commitment to socialism.

We now know that the youth vote was linked also in 1976 to a certain element of excessive socialist zeal which resulted in persons below voting age registering and voting for the PNP in some constituencies.

When the fascination with ideology had run its course and the reality of a smaller economic cake became evident to many after the ideological dust had settled, the same young voters played a decisive role in reversing the big PNP majorities and voting Manley out of power.

When in the mid-1970s the PNP's domination of the political mood of the youth created panic inside the JLP and an overdose of confidence in the PNP, the result was increased political violence. JLP muscle came down heavily on the PNP youth organisations and the PNP youth in turn mounted violent counter offensives.

The youth in the political gangs (both PNP and JLP) paid a high price for this escalation of force and their political zeal in 1970s. They featured disproportionately in the deaths and injuries from gunshots in the political war games between 1976 and 1980.

Assessing those youthful votes

The 1970s under the past PNP administration was the first and only period in the country's political history which witnessed a combination of large-scale social programmes targeted towards youth, intensive political propaganda with a message geared to captivate the youth and the opening up of political channels for youth leaders and activists to come forward and play an active role in the country's politics.

A lot of the positive residual political image of the PNP as being a people and youth-oriented party derives from some of these political and policy initiatives in the 1970s.

Since 1980, much of this has changed. A crowded '70s agenda of high-level and intense political mobilisation (much of it directed at the youth) has given way to an '80s concentration of energies by the Seaga government on filling and mending the country's economic potholes.

Mobilisation has given way to de-mobilisation.

Interest in politics and political participation by younger voters has consequently declined since 1980.

But the youth vote remains a potentially powerfuls force which could be decisive in determining who wins the next elections.

In a youthful electorate such as ours, the youth vote is important not only because it is a large proportion of the electorate.

The youthful voters tend to be less tied to existing party loyalties. They vote more according to issues than their older counterparts. Their weaker loyalties to the existing party power structure mean that they tend to reflect (in an exaggerated form) all the new currents of political tendencies. At present apathy and anti-government sentiments are strong among the youth.

The youth are disproportionately pressured in both good and bad times by higher than average levels of unemployment, poverty and material deprivation.

They, therefore, tend to vote heavily against governments presiding over hard times or are very responsive to parties that offer attractive policies, messages, promises and ideologies geared to meet the needs of younger citizens.

They face the uncertainties in a society with limited economic opportunities that often fall far behind the expectations of the youth.

Whereas the mood of the youth was captivated by PNP socialism in the 1970s, since 1980, it is a combination of religion and spirituality, on the one hand, and drugs and hustling, on the other, which have pre-occupied the energies of the youth.

Today interest in PNP-JLP politics declines rapidly as we move down the ladder of age as can be seen in chart provided.

Neither party now captivates the youth.

The PNP, however, is doing far better than the JLP policies with economic hardships and perceive Manley and the PNP through the image of being a people-oriented party.

To win the next election, the JLP has to reverse this pattern and establish a commanding lead over the PNP among younger voters.

Why is this so?

Once a party has been in power for eight years, cumulative gripes and grievances will develop over time and cause slippage of support among older voters. That is an unavoidable reality.

In order to stay in power, a governing party, therefore, has to corner the youth vote as a counter-weight to this slippage of support among older voters.

There are three tendencies among the youth voters today.

Some have withdrawn their political interest and are not likely to vote.

Others are supporting the PNP as part of an anti-government wave dissatisfied with continued economic hardships.

Yet others are warming to Mr. Seaga's message of hope based on the prospects of economic recovery and growth creating thousands of jobs and enlarging the economic cake.

At the moment, the apathetics and the anti-government tendencies outnumber the pro-JLP and pro-third term tendencies.

If the JLP third term is to be on at all, that latter tendency has to become the overwhelmingly dominant one among youth voters.

No message

The JLP's problem is that it has no captivating message as the PNP had in the seventies, and in these still difficult times, a great burden of economic pressure is being felt by the youth.

The balance of numbers between the youth voters deciding either not to vote, or to vote for Mr. Manley or to vote for Mr. Seaga's third term will be decisive in determining who wins when the day of reckoning comes.

Our parties and party leaders would be well advised to deal with the youth voters who are going to disproportionately determine who sits in Jamaica House in 1989.