Determinants of voter turnout in Nsukka Council of Enugu State, South Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Voting is becoming of significance in Nigeria, as in many other countries in Africa. Although Nigerian electoral politics has attracted full attention from scholars, there is little research on the factors that determine voter turnout in the country at the local level, especially the South-East geopolitical zone (GPZ). This paper is a stepwise logistic regression analysis of the determinants of voting in Nsukka council in Enugu State, South-East GPZ of Nigeria. The results show that age (0.230), education (0.532), marital status (1.355), political trust (1.309) and partisanship (˗0.570) are significant predictors of voter turnout. The effect of age, education, marital status and political trust on voting is positive and statistically significant, but partisanship has a statistically significant negative relationship with voting (p<0.01). The paper highlights the importance of local level geographical differentials in the factors influencing voting in Nigeria.

COVID-19 pandemic and political participation in Lagos, Nigeria

“…The result that political trust significantly predicts voting even in the face of opinions on COVID-19 confirms already established ideas that political trust is the primary determinant of turnout in Nigeria and many African states (Kuenzi and Lambright 2007 , 2011 ; Nwankwo and Okafor 2017 ; Nwankwo 2019 ). Ezeibe et al ( 2020 ) have argued that people's negligence of the government's directives on the pandemic, such as social distancing and self-isolation, is because of political distrust in Nigeria.…”

“…Appendix 1 shows the questionnaire, and Appendix 2 details the sampling scheme. The conditions for the choice of participants were eligible to vote, availability at the time of the survey, and disposition to partake in the study in line with earlier studies (Nwankwo 2019 ).…”

“…The participant's identifying information was not directly indicated in the research report. In line with earlier studies, the questionnaire's administration followed random sampling of selected households in the street to avoid haphazard sampling and to recognized areas covered (Nwankwo and Okafor 2017 ; Nwankwo 2019 ). In each household selected, one questionnaire was administered to ensure a broader coverage of participants from varied backgrounds (Nwankwo and Okafor 2017 ).…”

“…The steadiest conclusions from these factors are the connection between political trust and electoral politics participation (Hooghe and Marien 2013 ). Studies exploring factors of voter turnout in Africa and indeed in Nigeria have noted that political trust is an essential factor determining political participation (Kuenzi and Lambright 2007 , 2011 ; Nwankwo and Okafor 2017 ; Nwankwo 2019 ). Political trust also boosts the acceptance of government policies and actions in the fight against COVID-19 in Nigeria (Ezeibe et al 2020 ).…”

“…The paper investigates the relationships between COVID-19 and voter turnout in Nigeria. Examining the determinants of voter turnout in Nigeria is pertinent because even though Nigeria is Africa's largest democracy (Nwankwo 2018 ), it has witnessed a consistent decline in voter turnout since 2003 (Nwankwo 2019 ). Since the "rule by the people" is the fundamental principle of democracy, it thus makes sense that higher levels of voter turnout confer legitimacy on the election and hence a measure of a democracy's performance (Nwankwo and Okafor 2017 ; Kuenzi and Lambright 2007 ).…”