Officer Elections experience record turnout

The 2011 Sabbatical and part-time Officer elections have reached record turnout, with 4,823 voters and 51,710 individual votes cast.

Despite being short of the aim of 5,000, in comparison with last years’ 4,675 voters and 4,712 in 2009, this makes 2011 one of the best years yet in terms of voting turnout.

However, the overall percentage of students who voted has in fact dropped. This year 21.3 percent of students voted, in contrast with 24.92 percent in 2009. “I think that percentage turnout is down due to the increase in students that are harder to engage with namely postgraduates and international students”, commented Democracy and Communications Officer Chris Luck.

When asked, students that spoke to the Boar that didn’t vote generally agreed that although they did think that it was important to vote and to have the opportunity
to vote, they didn’t due to lack of interest in candidates. “The only people I meant to vote for were people who I knew personally, I didn’t have much interest in
the other candidates”, commented one Chemistry student that wished to remain anonymous. “You could say maybe that people are generally happier with the quality of the Students’ Union this year, so less eager to vote for change”.

In terms of publicity, she added “I think maybe the start and end times of the voting could be better publicised”, though generally the level of publicity for the elections was thought to be enough to advertise well.

“We’ve been doing more than ever before”, said Luck when asked about publicity. “Last year we largely relied on the candidates to publicise the elections”. Despite still relying on this publicity, he added that e-mails were sent, elections were featured both in the Bubble and on the Students’ Union website and leaflets were handed out. “Next year I plan to make a much bigger thing of it and make the build-up to elections longer”.

“If you’re on-campus, you can’t miss the publicity” said Sam Gower, a first-year PPE student. “I didn’t vote because it’s just impossible to make an informed choice. I don’t have time to read through dozens of incredibly long manifestos trying to figure out the difference between all the candidates. No matter who won, things were always going to be pretty much the same at Warwick”.

“I think turnout is up this year because there are more students at the University to actually vote. Percentage turnout is down, and that’s the real indicator of how much the student body cares about Union elections” concluded Gower.