Are they listening? Political participation and feeling heard

In the spirit of journalistic investigation, I decided to take to the streets and conduct a survey. I went seeking answers to questions about people's feelings on the issue of politics and its relationship to contemporary media output.

The survey explored people's understanding of the UK voting system, whether they voted, and how, in the most rudimentary sense, they felt about it. It also examined respondents' perceptions of different forms of media and the extent to which they trusted them. I will be the first to admit that my sample size is not huge, and also that my locations for collecting responses could be construed to have a distorting influence on the results. Over the course of three days I approached 275 people in and around central London, 219 declined to take part, however I did get 53 complete valid surveys.

In the first section of the questionnaire I examined respondents' engagement with the political system and posed, among others, the following questions: 'Do you feel you understand how the UK political voting system works?', 'Did you vote in the last UK local or general election?', and, 'Have you ever contacted a politician or political party about an issue directly?' The results are shown in the following chart.

While the responses suggest that people are generally engaged with politics, the level of direct contact with politicians or political parties is significantly lower than those who turn out to vote. However, whether this public engagement brings with it a feeling of being heard by political institutions is a more interesting question.

This was addressed by the questions, ‘Do you feel the current political system works for you?’, ‘As a voter, do you feel “heard” locally?’, and ‘As a voter, do you feel “heard” nationally?’ The following graph shows the percentages of all respondents who expressed dissatisfaction.

So, what can we understand from these findings? They seem to suggest that dissatisfaction with the political arena cannot be explained by a lack of engagement, perhaps the opposite. Most respondents stated that they understood the political system and claimed to have voted in the last local or general election. Yet despite this participation, 75% reported feeling dissatisfied at a national level and 44.2% stated that the system did not work for them. However, only a third of respondents, 34%, had contacted a politician or political party directly.

In a voting population of over 46 million in parliamentary elections, as recorded by the Office for National Statistics in 2021, there are inevitably going to be a great many disappointed voters: people who just did not get what they wanted. Therefore, might this just be a case of sour grapes? Is it reasonable to feel let down by the political system because it fails to deliver the result you personally wanted, or does the level of dissatisfaction shown here reveal something more fundamental about the relationship between people in the street and those who govern them?

What do you think? Do you feel your voice is heard by your politicians locally or nationally? Take our poll and let us know.