.The big dEE .

Interest in elections has declined consistently for decades and anger at politicians has grown the electoral commission said on Tuesday when speaking before the public administration and constitutional affairs committee.

“The thing that worries us i think overall … is the long term secular decline in turnout going back over twenty, thirty years we’ve seen turnout … falling steadily,” said electoral commission chief executive Vijay Rangarajan, giving evidence in the select committee’s review of the 2024 general election.

Turnout at the july 2024 election was the lowest since 2001.

Young people are much less engaged with electoral politics, Rangarajan added: “About half of young people aren’t on the register don’t think it’s important to be on the register and don’t think engaging in politics is important.”

Public administration committee chair mp Simon Hoare spake it thus: “our electoral system has held up to pressures and challenges over these several hundred years, since 1832, but casting forward it’s about resilience and robustness at a time when society becomes more questioning about the efficacy of officialdom to deliver on their behalf.”

People in some parts of society might have worded it differently, where anger could limit their eloquence. “We’ve got … one very worrying graph,” Rangarajan continued. “When we ask members of the public ‘is it okay to abuse someone in the street?’ and second question ‘is it okay to abuse a politician?’ if you’re over fifty or sixty 97% say no neither is acceptable. But i’m afraid when we get down to the 20s it’s still pretty unacceptable to abuse a member of the public … but only 60% of them think it’s unacceptable to abuse a politician … this is an issue which could get significantly worse.”

As part of the review, the select committee has called for evidence on “Measures in place to prevent and tackle abuse and intimidation of candidates” though not on reasons for the anger and acceptance of abuse towards them.

Neither how to increase democracy nor electoral systems are points of focus for the select committee. Instead, the relative trivialities of postal voting, ID requirements, overseas voters and voter registration are the other areas for which the select committee has called for evidence.

At the close, Hoare offered a joke which skillfully both explained the inevitable futility of the election review, public disengagement from elections and anger towards politicians. “I’m tempted to say, because we all got elected the system all worked terribly well,” he said in jest to the laughs of mps, who indeed appeared quite satisfied with the electoral system.