Nuorten järjestelmäkiinnittyminen

Authors

• Voitto Helander

Abstract

The study is based upon a longitudinal analysis of voting participation among young adults. System Commitment Two samples of voters representing different political generations were picked from the Among Young Adults voting register. Both age cohorts were followed through five elections from the age of eighteen to the age of twenty-seven years. The older cohort, franchised in the early seventies, participated on average more actively compared to the younger cohort, franchised in the beginning of the eighties. The share of completely non-committed voters was, however, smaller among the younger age cohort in comparison with the older one. This may be interpreted as evidence of a change in voting patterns with a greater share of the younger generation representing the issue voting model while the older one behaves according to the more traditional party identification model. The analysis also pointed out that low turnout could be explained to a large extent by the »portrait of the underdog». But regarding both cohorts, changes in life-situation during the period under analysis worked out as better explanations of variations in participation activity than the conventional socio-demographic variables usually applied in cross-cut analyses.