A strong link between churchgoing and voting has been established by a lecturer in the department of government at UCC. Ms Fiona Buckley has found that across all age groups, people who regularly attend religious services are most likely to vote at election time.
Ms Buckley has just completed the study for her master's thesis which is entitled "The Puzzle of Non-Voting in the Republic of Ireland". Her finding may force politicians to reassess the wisdom of abandoning the church gates when they are on the election trail.
In the 18-24 age group, Ms Buckley found that 83 per cent of respondents who attended church services voted in the local government and European Parliament elections in 1999. The figure, surprisingly, for the 1997 general election was 50 per cent.
In the age group 25-40, 60 per cent of respondents voted in the two elections; 70 per cent in the 41-54 age group voted while 69.6 per cent of those aged 55 and over voted in the local government and European election and 91 per cent two years earlier in the general election.
Ms Buckley used the constituency of Cork North Central to conduct her survey. Her interviews were broad-ranging, delving into everything from the constituents' interest in day-today political events to the frequency with which they read the newspapers.
While she could not identify any single reason why people did not vote, she found that typically, non-voters were young, had low levels of education and were of low social status. They had little or no interest in politics and were cynical about politicians. The breakdown of respondents showed that 64 per cent of people with higher incomes voted, while the figure for the less well paid was 40 per cent.
The conclusion, says Ms Buckley, is that class bias exists in relation to turnout, a finding which is consistent with other studies in the US.
She found that although nonvoting transcended educational boundaries, turnout was decreasing at a time when educational standards were increasing. In the 1997 general election, men and women non-voters were equal but in the 1999 European elections, the majority of non-voters were women.
Not surprisingly, those who expressed high levels of trust in the political system were three times more likely to vote than those who did not. Have the young become hopelessly apathetic towards politics? The answer seems to be yes and no.
Ms Buckley found party membership highest in Cork North Central among younger voters. However, none of the respondents in the 25-40 age group expressed a party allegiance and the percentage for those aged between 40 and 55, and 55 plus was extremely low. Lack of party attachment, therefore, is becoming a factor in why people do not vote.
Political scandals, the survey found, had led to an increase in cynicism which in turn affected turnout. Registration was also shown to be a factor with 8 per cent of those who did not vote claiming the reason was because they were not registered.
The perceived importance of an election was also found to be relevant. In the last general election, the turnout in the constituency was 61 per cent whereas in the local government and European Parliament elections, the figures were 48 per cent and 47 per cent respectively, reflecting the fact that people did not think these elections were as important.
When to go before the people is always a problem for politicians. In Cork North Central, the preferred months are May and October. Some 57 per cent of respondents also favour Saturday as the ideal polling day.
"This study confirms many of the findings of previous studies on non-voting. The character description of the typical non-voter in Cork North Central is quite similar to that formulated in other studies. It is correct to say that personal resource; an individual's psychological involvement in politics; electoral context; and the notion of rational abstention, all contribute to non-voting.
"This study shows that the theories of non-voting, largely developed in the United States, can be just as easily applied to Ireland, thus confirming, rather paradoxically, the universal problem and explanation of non-voting," Ms Buckley said.