Analysis of the Research Concerning the Drop in Voters Turnout among Young People - Essay Example

Background A drop in voters’ turnout among young people within the age range 18-24 concerns the Electoral Commission. In order to determine the causeof this drop, extensive research is carried on to understand these people’s reasons for not voting.Among the reasons that have been found out are categorized as follows: mistrust towards politicians, low interest towards politics as viewed as a boring and irrelevant subject to the lives of these young people; the feeling of not being valued by politicians; and, little knowledge about politics and various parties.

This situation has called for some recommendations from researchers. Among the recommendations given were: to recognize and understand young people’s concerns; to work to increase political awareness and knowledge; to tackle the related issues of social and political exclusion among young people; to review the electoral system and the choices available to voters; to make electoral registration easier; to make voting easier. In order to address the situation, a campaign that aims to change the current attitudes and perceptions of these young people is necessary that will influence behaviors towards voting.

Target audience and stakeholdersThe primary target audience in our case would be young people that belong to the age range 18-24, who are legally eligible to vote. This primary target audience will be the focus of our marketing communications messages. But we also have our secondary target audience is composed of a broader group, which is young people: this encompasses young people from ages 11-24.Given our primary target audience as the decision-makers of whose behaviors we want to influence towards voting, we need to identify the other members of our decision-making unit who would serve as influencers.

First, we need to know who these people look up to. These can be opinion leaders that they admire and respect so much, such as celebrities like famous football players, young music icons, actors and writers. Other potential influencers include peers, community leaders, parents and older siblings. These people also get information from their co-workers, classmates, university professors and tutors.These influencers are also good to target and include in our campaign as they serve as source of information too to the decision-makers, or our primary target audience.

Prioritized SWOTThe SWOT or strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats related to the election voting participation is determined and given a particular weight in order to determine what to prioritize. The higher the number, the more an item should be prioritized.ELECTION VOTING PARTICIPATIONRanking of each SWOT item from 1 to 3 according to its importance to the governments objectives (with 3 being the most important)Damage if not addressedBenefit if leveragedCost of addressing or leveragingWindow of timeTotalStrengths:high turnover among 65+--1113concern about young people supported by all--3339political parties--Weaknesses:low turnover among 18-24 year olds3--339not-so-easy electoral registration process2--226not-so-easy electoral voting process2--226Opportunities:changeable attitudes towards politics due to little knowledge and perceptions--3339addressable disillusionment among young people--3339emphasis on the difference an individual can--3339make through votingportrait of relevance of politics to their lives--3339Threats:mistrust towards politicians can aggravate through3--328more negative news about themneglect of parties through fewer projects that 3--328focus on young people age 18-24less information disseminated by parties that3--328targets young people*the higher the number, the higher the priorityThe table gives us a glimpse of the numbers as weight in relevance to the election voting participation issue.

In this we could see that those with the score nine should be prioritized more. These include: a weakness to be addressed, which is low turnover among 18-24 year olds; opportunities to be leveraged, which are to changeable attitudes towards politics due to little knowledge and perceptions, addressable disillusionment among young people, emphasis on difference an individual can make through voting, and portrait of relevance of politics to the lives of these young people; threats which impacts to be lessened that include aggravation of mistrust towards politicians through more negative news about them, perception of neglect of parties’ on young people’s lives through fewer projects targeted toward them, and less effort and focus on information dissemination to young people by various parties.

The ones that are mentioned are those SWOT items that score 8 and above, which are considered critical items. While all the SWOT items should be considered, due to certain constraints that may arise when planning the campaign, those of the less priority can be dropped to give more focus to the more critical ones.