It's certainly widespread in Poland. We regularly have parliamentary elections where the turnout sticks round 40 % or so (in municipal or provincial it will be even less), and often the most disciplined electorate are the elderly who ussually vote for hard-core right wing parties, which is very unfortunate because those kind of parties don't concern themselves that much with the "mundane" stuff of how to create wealth and keep economic disparities at bay, instead they focus mostly on ideological issues like fighting abortion and taking a stand against the idea of gay marriage, which all may be important matters for the people directly involved in such personal situations, but are not decisive at all in the grand scheme of things.
When you ask one of the absent voters as to why they don't vote, they will say something like "none of the parties really represent me", "it's all rigged anyway", "politicians here are all the same" blah blah blah. Some of that will ring true, but it's kind of like a brocken clock two times a day - they are simply lucky to get it right, it doesn't come from any substantial analysis of the factors at play. It's something wholly different from, say, an Anarchist who has decided to opt-out of the system for well thought-out ideological reasons.They don't even want to take the damn time to learn about what exactly different parties are proposing in terms of tax policies and such (apparently numbers are boring to them), so no wonder they later feel like none represent their interests, because they themselves express no discerneble views that could be represented. I am both angry and bewildered as almost every time there is an election, there will be one or two candidates without any record under their belts who get elected into the parliament, simply because his or her last name is the same as some other, non-related, already famous politician (I'm totally serious about this), it's like people go inside the voting booth and have no idea what they're doing.
So it's all a massive Catch - 22, I'd say. Ignorant electorate breeds lousy politicians, there's no way around that.
Even the ones that actually are active and want to change something are thin on the ground. This Saturday there were protests in Warsaw modeled after the 99% thing, and according to the police
150 people showed up, even though there are things that a lot more folks have reasons to be angry about (In my country there is a difficult situation with affordable housing for example, so the freshly married are often still living with their parents).
Anyway, that's my mini-rant, hope I answered your question.
Edited by chris w, 17 October 2011 - 10:01 AM.
