The number of young voters in the age bracket of 18-29 is roughly 31 percent of the registered voters. If we add another layer of relatively young voters, 27-35, the number jumps to more than 47 percent. This reflects the youth bulge of Pakistan. By these figures, the proportion of young voters is the highest in Pakistan.
In assessing or explaining voter behaviour we must focus on age, class, locale – urban or rural – and other social characteristics of the voting population. In all elections, young voters, whatever their numbers, stand out as a separate category, a subject that our election experts and analysts have generally ignored in the past.
Given such a vast number of young voters, and about 25 percent among them being the first time voters, the potential of their swinging to one side or another is what could produce unexpected electoral results.
There is no way of knowing in advance, except through exist-polls surveys, which party or candidates the young voters are going to vote for. However, before they actually vote, we can do social and political analysis of trends, attitudes and inclinations of the young voters.
This is exactly the objective of this essay. We will do this analysis by raising a few questions. Will any party or leader succeed in converting the young voters of Pakistan into a single voting bloc? How likely are the young voters to come out in large numbers and vote on the elections day? Are the young voters politically committed or have they yet to make up their choices? Will the voting patterns of the youth in rural and urban areas of all provinces be, or can be, similar?
No political party has ever ignored the electoral potential of the young voters in Pakistan. Nor have ethnic, sectarian or religious parties done so. All parties, ethnic and sectarian groups have student wings with a focus on educated youth for easy political and social mobilisation. In the 2013 elections, youth has rather loomed much larger in the political discourse, and thus in political strategies of major political parties.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has attempted to garner the youth beyond its student wing in Punjab and other provinces by distributing billions worth of laptops. The party has touted the free imported laptop distribution as a means of promoting computer technology. No country has ever promoted technology this way. The clear purpose behind this scheme was to win over a section of youth. One could only consider it as bribe that may or may not work.
The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has given loans to unemployed youth to start businesses and started Benazir Income Support Programme nationwide for the poor classes, costing close to a hundred billion rupees to the national exchequer. This is the most novel way of reducing poverty or inequality. The scheme has clear political motives of creating and sustaining a social support base for electoral reasons. The PPP has also convened youth conventions, including a major one at the Presidency that party’s young Chairman Bilawal Zardari Bhutto addressed to mobilise the youth.
Religious and sectarian groups of all denominations have youth political nurseries, as they use religion as a source of power, intimidation, social control and influence, including the practice of grabbing public lands, even parks. The youth for them serves as foot soldiers, provides street power, and is an effective tool they can count on for agitations and election campaigns.
While denouncing initially the use of students for political purposes, the Kaptaan has also realised the great potential that the youth in educational institutions offers for his politics of change. The message of PTI is focused on the youth – Imran Khan started focusing on the youth much earlier than any other major political party. The Kaptaan was able to sense the change in the political attitude of the youth that he rightly found disgruntled and uninspired by the leaders of the two major parties and their lacklustre performance.
Frankly speaking, the youth is not a single voting bloc; it is rather divided, as the rest of Pakistan is, along the political, regional, ethnic and religious lines. A major portion of youth supports PTI in some of the urban areas but there is also some level of support in the rural communities that are fragmented into narrow biradri lines. The big question is: will the Kaptaan be able to transform a popular youth sentiment for change into a major political swing? He may face huge difficulty in untangling the youth from the social network of biradri in the rural areas, and from other traditional connections like religion and ethnicity in the urban areas.
It all comes down to this: will the youth vote in larger numbers this time than it has ever done before? My sense today is that the proportion of youth voting on May 11 is going to be greater than any other category of voters. My optimism rests on two important variables. First is the excitement of being a first-time voter. Every election around the world has seen first-time voters voting in larger numbers. Even if they don’t feel strongly about the parties or their leaders, just the thrill factor creates a social and psychological push for voting. Secondly, we are living a climate of tension and conflict and there is a general distrust of the government in the society today. In such times, voters of all social groups vote in larger number, and the youth by dint of having stakes in the future votes in even greater strength. In my assessment, voter turnout is going to be higher than the regular pattern, or perhaps historically the highest.
Finally, the voting pattern of the youth in urban areas and the rural ones is going to be different on account of cultural and social conditions and the influence they have on the voting behaviour. The urban youth is relatively free to form political opinion, is autonomous and has higher degree of political participation than the rural youth. The urban youth is likely to vote strictly along the party lines and has clear political preferences. Their turnout is likely to be more and will make the difference in almost every constituency. The rural youth is fragmented down to an individual’s reference social group. The youth in this environment will be influenced more by biradri-based voting blocs than independent spirit.
The message of change, mobilisation strategy and campaign focus of the political parties will matter more in the urban areas than in the rural communities to attract young voters. In the rural areas social connections of the candidates with the villages, families and biradri voting blocs will influence the youth more than the party identity or party performance. The real game changer is going to be the message of change and how it is going to play out to attract the youth in every village and city. If successful, we may see the birth of the third major party, the PTI, and that will positively change the politics of Pakistan forever.
The writer is a professor of Political Science at LUMS.
