Beyond the binary: examining dynamic youth voter behaviour in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The 2021 South African local government elections continued a trend of dissipating turnout among young voters. The youth, aged 18–34, constitute nearly a third of SA's adult population, and their voting decisions could have a decisive influence on electoral politics. Youth voter behaviour - including that of the ‘born-free’ generation - has been an area of critical interest. However, this interest has mostly yielded an image of young people as disillusioned, consistent abstainers. We argue that youth electoral behaviour should be approached not as a binary of voter/abstainer, but be placed along a voting-behavioural continuum. Our analysis of UJElection Survey and the South African Social Attitudes Survey data, supports concepts that function as markers along this continuum, including ‘loyal voters', ‘casual voters', ‘party-loyal abstainers' and ‘consistent abstainers', each with different underlying motivations. Ultimately, this dispels static notions, providing a more nuanced and complex picture of youth voter behaviour.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Young voters are conceptualised differently across numerous different studies. South Africa's Youth Development Policy defines young people as aged between 14 and 35. While Statistics South Africa generally defines young adults as aged between 18 and 34 years. We adopt Statistics South Africa's approach as this better enables as to compare the youth to older generations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was generously supported by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in South Africa.