In this essay, I will demonstrate how the dependent variable, voting behaviour, is increased by the independent variable, voting age. Voting behaviour can be defined as the way someone votes due to their economic, social and political preferences. This could also include not voting at all if they feel they wouldn’t be represented in any way. For example, voting for Conservative in a strong labour constituency. The voting age is the age at which you can vote in elections and referendums and can be shown by different age groups. These different age groups are interpreted differently with some having larger gaps and some having smaller gaps. Whilst most elections are portrayed in smaller groups, referendums are frequently shown in larger groups, however, for the purpose of this essay it is easier to have smaller gaps to show the different behaviour because it shows more of a gradual change in behaviour over the different ages. These groups include: 18-19, 20-24,25-29,30-39,40-49,50-59,60-69 and 70+. The reasoning behind using many groups instead of a few is to show clear change behaviour whether it be a change in political party or actually voting.
Our conceptualisation of voting behaviour includes age, social class and political involvement. Social class has a major correlation to age as we see more people becoming better off financially as they become older because they find a better job or earn a promotion because of their improved skill set as they have more experience when they are younger and therefore earn a higher wage. This would change voting behaviour because they will want to keep that money and vote conservative when they maybe wouldn’t have beforehand. Also, we need to analyse voting outcomes which are interpreted to be the way in which people vote and how it affects the method in which something is completed or who should be head of the leadership such as the conservative government in the latest general election where they achieved the most votes. We can also discuss media as at different ages media has a stronger or weaker impact on their behaviour. At a younger age,people are more likely to be influenced by the media as they are more immersed in it, with improvements in technology. From this concept, we could assume labour had a better use of media as shown by the higher votes of young people.
There is a striking correlation between the age and the voting behaviour shown by every election result we see. Not just in who they vote for but also if they are voting. Shown by this table we can see that as people gradually become older, they are more likely to vote in an election. This is because they begin to have more of an opinion over different policies, potentially because they are having children and want the best system for them and therefore need to vote in order to change it. Also, as you become older you begin to pay tax and want to have some input in where the tax money would be spent is to vote because parties spend more on different aspects of the economy than others. Clearly shown on the graph the voting participation clearly increases from just 57% by 18-19-year olds to 84% by 70+-year olds. This is accompanied by a steady increase throughout each age group with only one anomaly where the 25-29 group have a higher participation level than the age group above them. Figure 2 clearly also shows a change in voting behaviour as we get older from voting more left-wing parties such as labour to more right-wing parties dominantly the conservatives. This is because as we become older, we become richer and therefore appreciate more of the conservative’s policies such as a lower tax rate compared to Labour. We also see this change because young people want more large change whereas the elder generation is less likely to want to see change as they are content and therefore vote for the conservatives. This could also be because the conservative party are more direct with the older generation and in the 2017 election only achieved 19% of 18-19-year olds, because they didn’t attempt to make more policies which overlapped their wants and needs and therefore were very unattractive to the younger generations whilst labour had many policies relating to the younger population such as tuition fees.
If the theory that as we get older our voting behaviour leans more to the conservatives we could consequently see a future dominated by the conservative party because of our ageing population and statistically it is said that the older generations would outnumber the younger by 2026 in that 0-15-year olds will only make up 18.8% of the population whilst 65 years and older will make up 20.5% of the population. However, this could be debated with the latest general election where they failed to get a majority however this was by only 10 seats even though this failure was more to do with leadership and manifesto policies rather than age. Also, in order for financial variables to impact our voting behaviour we have to make the assumption that all of the younger generation comes from a relatively poor background because if they are financially well-off, their parents could have a very weighted input on their voting behaviour. If this was true it would limit the extent the voting behaviour changes and could even reverse the process if they started voting conservative but as they got older, they became less well-off and began to vote labour in order to see more change. However, this is very hypothetical, and family may not have any effect on how someone votes. We must also assume in any situation that no one is voting tactically. This means someone votes for a party in order to keep another party out of power in the constituency.