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Originally Posted by Tietäjä
but also the lack of interest and general complacency, as well as the issue regarding the elections as a huge institution and a single voter as a tiny entity. Median voting theory would imply that actually all power is focused on one single voter at a time, but that's probably way far off from practise. With figures of voting activity on the decline, and levels of education on increase, there seems to be a negative correlation. Although, as mentioned in the original, many other factors affect the voting, and are also a persistent and increasing problem of national democracy. Part of the inefficiencies may be blamed on lack of education (and the fault mass-media may have would also imply lack of education and media critisism), but the interest in voting probably can't.
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I agree. There does not seem to be a correlation between education levels and the interest in voting. My idea is that the media and the way how politics, politicians and opinions of parties are portraid in the media have a much larger influence on people's interrest in politics and voting behaviour.
The media serves you an over-simplified view of politicians/parties and their views. Added to that politicians play this game along and during interviews take the popular middle-ground rather than saying what I, the voter, want or believe.
And then there is the bulletted lists of party views and the online voting guides that again simplify the politics.
You could ofcourse claim that you could go out and investigate more in-depth what the different parties' views are, but then again, I am not going to dig for this kind of information for the reason Tietäjä mentions: "the issue regarding the elections as a huge institution and a single voter as a tiny entity"
amongst another reasons, for one: I'm too lazy, like 99.9% of the rest of the voting population
Then after the elections you hear parties making compromises on points that were spearheading their campaign. Or another good one, party members disagreeing on certain views and slinging around mud in the public media. That really adds to their credibility.
I didn't vote the last three times or so because I felt I didn't have any clue what most politicians were talking about. And those few things that I did know what it was about, they had the same views. And I felt the other x-million voters out there could do the job of selecting whatever politician was last on TV better than I could.
Next time, if he's still alive (and not gets murdered like Fortuyn), I'm going to vote Wilders. Not because I necessarilly agree with his views, or because he has such popular/unpopular views, but because so far he has been the most consistent (and credible in my opinion) politician that I have seen in the media.
So that's it... politics for me is a mass media event in which I get to pick the guy that I like most for the month running up to election time. And no system is going to change that.