Young People Care Little for Politicians Disengage from Politics

Young Australians cast informal votes due to immaturity or laziness, that’s the prevailing wisdom, and also indicative of the problem, and also untrue.

Politics is not engaging with the young and so the young are caring less about politics, politicians and a system that has ignored them. They are messing up their votes in protest.

Political alienation, rather than immaturity, is the primary cause of young Australians voting informally in elections, a new study has found.

Flinders University’s landmark study, analysing data from 25,246 Victorian voters, was conducted in collaboration with University of Adelaide Professor of Politics Lisa Hill and the Victorian Electoral Commission. It focuses specifically on intentional informal ballots to isolate the motivations behind protest voting.

The findings, published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, show the relationship between a voter’s age and their likelihood to cast an intentional informal vote is “fully mediated” by three key drivers of political disaffection:
•    A low level of interest in politics  
•    Dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy  
•    A lack of satisfaction with the available candidate choices.   

Professor Rodrigo Praino, Director of the Jeff Bleich Centre for Democracy and Disruptive Technologies (JBC) at Flinders University, says: “For too long, we’ve dismissed young people’s informal votes as simple immaturity or laziness. Our research shows this is fundamentally wrong.”

The research suggests the responsibility for rising informal voting among youth lies not with the voters themselves, but with a political system that fails to offer them engaging candidates and meaningful choices.

Lead author, Dr Nick Bordeleau, a research fellow at Flinders University JBC (College of Business, Government and Law), says: “It’s not a sign of laziness; it’s a clear, rational signal of political disaffection.

“They are showing up as required by law, but lodging an informal vote because they feel like democracy has left them behind.

“This is a wake-up call for all political parties,” adds Dr Bordeleau. “You can’t take the youth vote for granted. Compulsory voting gets young people to the polling booth, but it doesn’t guarantee a valid vote.

“To earn their vote, parties need to offer genuine choice, field candidates that reflect youth values, and prove that our democracy can work for all generations.”

The study, described as one of the most exhaustive ever undertaken on the topic, shows that factors like dissatisfaction with democracy and candidate choices fully explain the relationship between age and informal voting.

The authors warn that because voting is a habitual behaviour, this early-life disaffection could have corrosive long-term consequences for the health and legitimacy of Australia’s democracy. There is a distinct opportunity for a party that recognises the condition of the young to make political inroads.

The new article, ‘On the relationship between age and intentional invalid voting in compulsory elections’ (2025) by Jean-Nicolas Bordeleau, Rodrigo Praino, Lisa Hill and Katharina Kretschmer (University of Adelaide) has been published in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties  - DOI: 10.1080/17457289.2025.2551056.

Also see The Conversation: ‘Why are young people more likely to cast informal votes? It’s not because they’re immature’

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