Young Voters and Political Participation in Portugal

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2023 session is Sara Monteiro Machado, whose focus is on social media use and youth political participation in Portugal. She notes that political science has failed to keep up with emerging forms of political participation in the current environment; such forms traditionally include institutionalised participation, protests, and volunteering, but now also consumerist participation, digital political participation, and lifestyle politics.

Youth are especially attracted to these new forms of unconventional political participation, perhaps to the detriment of actual voting in elections. In fact, electoral abstention is especially pronounced amongst young people. There is plenty of political participation by young voters, of course, yet this cannot replace voting unless democratic systems change quite considerably. This is also a problem since governments give priority to the demands of pressure groups, but non-voters cannot exert any electoral pressure.

Some studies assume that unconventional participation can eventually lead to electoral participation, but in most countries this dynamic has not yet materialised. The present project explored this trajectory (and the opposite, where voting participation also leads to other forms of political participation) through an online survey of some 600 participants between the ages of 18 and 29.

What emerged from the analysis of this turnout is that electoral participation tends to be a stronger predictor of other forms of non-electoral participation. Not voting is thus likely a symbol of general political apathy, while voting is likely also a first step towards other forms of participation. It will be important to further examine the interrelationships between these different forms of participation.