Exploring the Trends and Factors that Contribute to the Declining Voters’ Turnout in South Africa: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Perspective

Abstract

In South Africa, one of the democratic human rights of every citizen as enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 is exercising the right to vote. Citizens are offered the right to vote as a form of expressing their voice, public participation, influencing decision-making and holding the government accountable. However, citizens globally are motivated or influenced by different factors when choosing their representatives or rule parties. Some citizens look at the viability of the parties’ manifestos, leadership characteristics and behaviour.  Given those factors, one of the concerns globally is a steady decline in voting behaviour from eligible citizens and mostly from the youth and to a lesser extent, the elderly. In the South African context, statistics of South Africa, in 2019 outlined that there were 26.1 million registered voters on the voters’ roll. But 9 million South Africans who were eligible to vote did not register to do so. This decline indicates the eligible South African electorate's inclination to exercise their voting rights. Based on the above concerns, this study (1) intends to explore the trends in voter turnout and (2) also intends to determine the factors that contribute to declining voter turnout in South Africa. The study further adopted Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs theory to understand the underpinning motivations behind voting behaviour and motivation. This is a qualitative research design in nature and uses secondary data to validate the study objectives. Based on the recent information and statistics, it is revealed that there is a declining turnout in election participation. Voters’ turnout has declined in recent years, from a high of 86.9% in 1994 to 62.66% in 2019. This decline is due to several factors, including disillusionment with the ANC government, poor service delivery, unemployment, corruption, apathy among young voters, and logistical challenges. The study recommends reforms to be employed by the IEC to increase election turnout by utilising an e-voting system to accommodate youth who are daily on the internet and social media platforms.