Civic Literacy and Falling Electoral Turnout: The United Kingdom 1992-1997

In: Canadian journal of political science: CJPS = Revue canadienne de science politique, Volume 36, Issue 3, p. 579-599

Abstract

Aggregate cross-national analyses of political participation have reported correlations between civic literacy, political knowledge and election turnout. Enhancing civic literacy among Canadian voters, in part by encouraging greater newspaper readership in the general population, has been put forward as a strategy for combating falling turnout in national general elections. The idea is evaluated comparatively at the level of individual voters, using data from the British Election Study. Newspaper readership is related to political knowledge, but increased newspaper reading does not translate into a greater propensity to vote.