Are non‐voters cynics anyway?

Abstract It has been argued that recent low turnouts for elections in Britain have been fostered by increased cynicism among voters, a cynicism that has been fostered by the increasingly critical tone in which politics are reported by the media. While survey data confirm that voters have become more cynical about politics, they provide little evidence that this trend was particularly strong between 1997 and 2001 among (regular) readers of the (tabloid) press or among regular watchers of television news. Nor do such data suggest that the rise in cynicism had much impact on the level of turnout for the 2001 general election. The biggest challenge facing coverage of politics in the media in general, and newspapers in particular, is not the impact that the tone of its coverage may be having on voters' attitudes towards how they are governed, but rather the increasing reluctance of voters with little interest in politics to read a newspaper at all. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications