Concept

Voter fatigue

Résumé
In political science, voter fatigue is a cause of political apathy and voter abstention which result from the electorates of representative democracies being required to vote too often. Voter fatigue and political apathy should be distinguished from what arises when voters are not allowed or unable to vote, or when disenfranchisement occurs, or voters are engaged generally but repelled by the options available. Voter fatigue can be used as a criticism of the direct democracy system, in those specific situations in which voters are constantly asked to decide on policy via referendums (though it should be borne in mind that such situations may be practically rare) or an out-of-cycle recall election. The latter was seen in 2012 for instance, when the electorate of the American city of Sheboygan, Wisconsin had to vote two times out-of-cycle early in the year due to a mayoral recall primary and run-off election, and then an additional two times in mid-year due to the 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. This was in addition to the usual winter primary and spring general election/presidential primary, and later fall primary and that year's United States presidential election, for a total of eight elections for the city in one year. In the run-up to the 2019 UK General Election, it was suggested by some media outlets that the electorate would be suffering from voter fatigue, and that this would impact on the result of the ballot and could also affect turnout. For the UK electorate, this was the third General Election in little over 4 years, having seen one in 2015 and the snap election of 2017, either side of the 2016 EU Membership Referendum. In the event, the Conservatives' resounding victory was partly attributed to fatigue with the ongoing Brexit arrangements, which had been exacerbated by the 2017 result. Turnout in 2019 was only slightly down on that of 2017, suggesting that voter fatigue may not have played a significant role.
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