Why Do Local Elections Matter for Psychologists? A Political Psychology Podcast Episode.

The majority of people think that local councils only collect their bins and they don't do anything else for them. However, local elections are a lot more important than people realize. From funding and policy on education, healthcare, mental health services and so much more, your local council directly impacts your life in endless ways. Especially for psychologists. Whenever a local council makes a decision to change mental health, education and adult social care funding, this single decision creates a ripple effect across a local community that can harm or benefit mental health. Therefore, in this political psychology podcast episode, you'll learn why do local elections matter for psychologists, why is voter turnout so low for local elections and most importantly, how do we improve voter turnout. If you enjoy learning about voter behaviour, systemic factors behind mental health and more, then this will be a brilliant episode for you. 

Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Applied Psychology: Applying Social Psychology, Business Psychology and More to Real World Problems. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Why Are Local Elections Important to Psychologists?

Before we dive into the main topic of the podcast episode, I want to help set the scene a little bit more and explicitly explain why local elections matter to psychologists. The examples I'll use will be mental health services, housing and education. 

Firstly, local elections are important for psychologists because if a political party gets a majority in a council and they cut mental health spending to the bone, then this will impact our work. Before an election, we might have been planning a brilliant new local mental health campaign that was really tailored to the individual needs of the council ward, it was a great project and the local community was fully behind it. Then the new party comes in and slashes our funding or they scrap the project because it doesn't align with their vision. This is all possible. Therefore, as you can see, psychologists have a vested interest in voting in local elections because we need to make sure Councillors who care about mental health get into power. 

In addition, as psychologists, we should be interested in the mental health ideas and campaigns that candidates are putting forward. We have brilliant research, critical thinking and analysis skills. Therefore, if a candidate says that they have a brilliant idea to solve the mental health crisis in a council area, but as psychologists, we know it won't work without a lot more detail, then we need to think twice about voting for that person. 

On the whole, when it comes to mental health services, psychologists should be interested and we should vote in local elections to help improve, sustain and protect our mental health services. 

Building upon this, if we take a more systemic approach to mental health and we look at the more societal-level factors, if a political party campaigns to end housing benefits or to tighten up the rules without a good alternative, then this could have a very negative impact on a community and lead to more mental health difficulties. If you're a single mother with two children and you can only pay rent each month because of your housing benefit, then after an election, you lose it because of new criteria. Then that is going to be very stressful for you, you might have to get a second or third job, you might have to skip meals to feed your kids or you might have to turn to crime just to survive. As you can see, a single council decision can change a person's life for the worse. 

If I apply this example more directly to psychology, this is important because this single mother is more likely to be overwhelmed, distressed and experience negative mental health outcomes. All because of the stress created by this council decision.

Therefore, this is why local elections should matter to psychologists, because we need to use our vote to do what's best for the local community, and hopefully decrease harmful decisions that will lead to increased negative mental health outcomes, more strain on our public services and increase suffering for innocent people. 

My final example in this introductory section is education. Councils make decisions on education all the time. Whether this is to do with student placement, special educational needs access or teaching, councils have a lot of influence over education. As an aspiring educational psychologist, I'm always interested in learning more about education in local areas. As well as if we apply Ecological Systems Theory to this example, one of the Ecological Systems that a child exists in is the relationship between the school and the local council. Since a local council might decide to reduce special educational needs funding by 5%, so this means the school needs to reduce teaching supply staff to save money so this negatively impacts a child and their education because there aren't as many support staff members to support them anymore. Therefore, this example shows how even though a child never directly interacts with the council Ecological System, they are still indirectly impacted by the council's decision. 

Ultimately, this is why psychologists should be interested in local elections, reading through candidate manifestos and voting. We understand that council decisions change lives and they have the power to harm or enhance a child's education.

Why Are Local Councils Important?

After setting the scene and explaining why local elections are important for psychologists to understand and get involved with, let’s take a closer look at why councils are important. Therefore, local councils have an immense role in local life and they are a lot more important than individuals think, because unitary authorities in particular deliver over 800 local services to the community. For example, unitary authorities provide local people with social housing, transport, education, road maintenance, waste management, financial services and so much more. Local councils are flat out critical to everyday life.

As a result this does raise a very important question for all of us, given how important and how much local councils directly impact our lives. Why do so few people vote in local elections compared to national elections?

In addition for a bit of context, because I’ve been getting into local politics a lot lately, the national average of local election turnout is about 37% and for my council ward, at the last council election in 2023, the voter turnout was 26%. That meant just under 75% of voters did not vote for their local councillors. To me, that is heartbreaking because local councils are so important, they directly impact the local community and they directly impact individuals.

This is why it’s important to understand why higher voter apathy, low levels of political efficacy and a lack of knowledge on the local government’s importance and electoral cycle is critical in understanding why voter turnout is so low for local elections.

How Does Voter Apathy and Political Efficacy Lead to Low Voter Turnout?

The first reason why election turnout is low for local elections is because of voter apathy. This refers to a person’s lack of interest in the political process, and this definitely includes local elections. Whereas political efficacy refers to a person’s belief about their ability to change political processes. These two beliefs are critical to understand because when you have higher voter apathy and reduced political efficacy, so when people don’t believe they can change the outcome of the election, then this leads to low voter turnout.

The best way to reduce voter apathy and political efficacy is by communication and positive experiences with the local council.

Personally as someone who is very interested in politics and as an aspiring psychologist, this is a little heartbreaking. Since I spent my life studying and wanting to help people using psychology. I want to improve lives, empower others and I truly want to make the world a better place. Yet it’s unfortunate that we live in a world where people aren’t engaged, they don’t think they can make changes and they don’t feel empowered enough to improve their local communities through political action.

This is something I would love to change in the future.

How Does Poor Communication Lead to Voter Apathy?

The idea of poor communication leading to voter apathy is fascinating and really interesting, because this isn’t about the Council having a poor communication strategy with the general public. Well, at least in part. In fact, it’s about all the social media dialogues, news articles, the negative way how other councillors and political parties talk about the council as unpopular, pointless and very inefficient. All this negativity actually creates a sense of hopelessness, fatigue and like the local council is so pointless that there is no point engaging in it. This isn’t just limited to local news and local issues, this is actually a national problem because both local and national news stories about the inefficacy of local government is overly simplistic and negative.

Personally, I think this is one of the reasons why in England, over the next few years we’re going to have a massive local government restructure that is not a good idea. It’s going to scrap a lot of councils, get rid of a good chunk of councillors and it means that local government will be more distant from local communities. Anyway, that is an issue that is way beyond the scope of this podcast episode. Anyway, I think because the general public is so apathetic towards local government despite how important it is to everyone, this is why the local government reorganisation can happen without much protest.

All these issues can be traced back to these constant negative stories about the inefficacy, unresponsiveness and the unpopular nature of local councils. Of course, I am not saying that local government should not be held to account. It needs to be. For a democracy to function, elected officials need to be held to account more than ever before. Yet we can be more positive, more hopeful and more mindful of our communications about the council.

In addition, when we compare the limited media attention of local government compared to national government and other international stories, the impact of negative media attention on voter apathy is a lot greater for local government when compared to national government.

Finally for this section, another reason why there’s poor communication around local councils and this increases voter apathy, is because of the poor communication between the Cabinet and Councillors themselves. Since it isn’t uncommon for councillors to become informed of a new council policy by their electorate instead of the Cabinet themselves. This is a major problem for a range of reasons. For example, it creates unneeded conflict between the Cabinet and councillors, because councillors are being blindsided by angry voters, and it makes policy implementation more difficult.

Another reason why this is problematic is because this can increase tensions between political parties within the council. This leads to different parties decrying the political system, shaming the council and this only increases feelings of voter apathy and political inefficacy. This means nothing changes and this isn’t healthy or good for local democracy.

Especially when it comes to our mental health services, the collective mental health of a local community and all the other interests of psychologists.

On the whole, poor communication is a reason for low turnout at local elections because the prejudiced dialogue between Councillors, the poor public relations strategy between the council and voters and the communication strategy are critical reasons behind low turnout. This is why it’s important not to berate other councillors, because this doesn’t help anyone, it doesn’t help the public image of the council and it increases voter apathy.

This is not a good thing.

How Do Poor Experiences with the Local Council Contribute to Low Election Turnout?

If you ask anyone what they think about the local council, they will all say something along the lines of the council doesn’t listen, there’s no point asking for anything because nothing happens or the opposite happens and the problems get worse and so on. This is important to take note of because it is these negative experiences with the local council that increase voter apathy and makes people believe that it’s impossible to change the political process and get a good council in power.

This is further supported by Facebook Community Groups who reveal a similar opinion towards the council and their experience of interacting with councillors and council-run services. As well as if we draw on policy feedback theory (a political theory that proposes that policies actively influence the social and political environment over time), negative experiences with a local council leads to higher voter apathy, reduced political efficacy and lower voter turnout in local elections.

In other words, these negative experiences just continue the same cycle of low turnout, minimal interest in politics and nothing changes.

Why Is The Perception of Importance of Local Elections so Important?

Another important aspect that explains why local election turnout is so low is because a lot of people don’t see local elections as important. Since whenever it comes to an election, voters do a “cost-benefit” analysis to see whether it is effective to vote and there are a range of internal and external factors that influence their decision. For example, research shows that strength of civic duty, education, income, age, length of residence and how much knowledge you have about the election increases your likelihood to vote. In other words, the older you are, the richer, more educated and the longer you’ve lived in an area, the more likely you are to vote in elections.

Those are all internal factors.

Also, before we talk about external factors, I want to comment on this from a psychology point of view. Psychologists are already very well placed to think about external and internal factors, because we constantly do this when it comes to supporting our clients in clinical psychology, or thinking about internal or external motivation in children in educational psychology, and even what external and internal organisational factors would help a human resources department thrive. We are already very well trained in thinking about these factors. Therefore, psychologists are in a great position to advise councils about how to improve election turnout, we can advise political parties what factors and challenges might impact the council’s likelihood to support or oppose a mental health policy and so on.

Psychologists have the skills, expertise and knowledge to implement a lot of positive change.

However, there are external factors that can impact someone’s likelihood to vote in a local election. For example, the logistical ease and accessibility of voting, the difference between the candidates and the seat’s safety. This refers to the extent to which a seat or council ward is considered a secure win for a political party or individual candidate. Personally, I would always like to challenge the idea of secure seats because as UK politics is increasingly showing there is no such thing as a safe seat. Any seat can be taken by another political party regardless of how many thousands or tens of thousands of a majority a candidate had at the last election.

These external factors are important because research shows that the more contested a seat is, the more varied and numerous the possible winners are, the more likely someone is to vote.

Personally, whilst this shouldn’t reveal my personal politics here, but this is why I am glad the UK is facing the end of a two-party system. It means the next general election might be evidence of a multi-party system where any of the four or five major political parties could win. This means that the two oldest political parties in the UK are going to have to fight, work hard and prove to the UK population why they should be in government if they want to remain in power.

On the whole, all these internal and external factors lead voters to do a cost-benefit analysis because people will vote when the benefit of voting outweighs the cost of participating. As well as research shows that whilst all the different factors tend to remain constant between national and local elections, knowledge is the one factor that changes dramatically between each type of election.

For instance, you might know what your governing or opposition party stand for nationally, but you might have no idea what they stand for locally and how they would improve your local area. This is important to think about because research shows the less people know about the council, council candidates and how the election works, the less likely they are to vote. As well as the majority of people sadly believe that local elections aren’t as important as national elections.

To some extent, I would argue the opposite. Given how local councils impact your everyday life every single day through education, roads, mental health, social housing and other services, they have a much more direct impact on your everyday life.

Conclusion: How Do We Improve Voter Turnout

I have to admit that this psychology podcast episode has been a lot of fun to explore, because we’ve seen how the actions of councillors, the local authority and other societal-level factors can come together to decrease voter turnout. And it’s important to remember that this is a problem because if people don’t vote then this means that nothing changes, it means innovative mental health solutions cannot be proposed and implemented and it harms a community as a whole.

Therefore, this means we have to question how we can improve voter turnout for local elections, and what does this mean for aspiring and qualified psychologists. We can improve voter turn out by improving civic knowledge about the importance of the local council and the over 800 services that they typically provide the local community with. As well as we can improve public image of the local council by investing and improving the interactions and experiences that individuals have with the council.

Furthermore, if these problems remain unaddressed then local councils run the risk of implementing unrepresentative policies and initiatives because so few people in the grand scheme of things actually voted for them. As well as these so-called democratic policies are not being held to account by most residents, because most residents are not voting or interested in them.

Moreover, we can improve and strengthen local democracy by improving civic knowledge, improving public relations and communication with the Council. We can do this by getting greater media distribution of the Council’s importance, their successes and their dialogue between Councillors. As well as whilst disagreements are flat out critical to a functioning democracy, we need to call out bad, toxic behaviours that only increase voter apathy.

Ultimately, as aspiring and qualified psychologists, if we want to see improvements in education, mental health care and our mental health services, then we need to vote ourselves and realise that our vote has the power to change our local community for the better. As well as we need to help local councils and authorities to tackle these factors that led to voter apathy and a perception of political inefficacy. If we tackle these factors then it helps to protect our democracy and mental health services at all levels of society.

To wrap up this episode, I want to share that personally (and I have no problem with someone stealing this idea as long as they aren’t in Medway) that I would flat out love to create a short assembly designed for 16, 17 and 18 year old students that explains the importance of local government, how it directly impacts these students, how they can inspire change as well as I want to give them detailed information on how council elections work, and how to register to vote.

Since I strongly believe if students understand how easy it is to register to vote then it would increase voter registration as well as if they understood how council elections work, as we’ve seen in this episode, it would increase turnout to. This is even more important considering that in the United Kingdom at the moment, the Representation of the People Bill (2026) is currently going through Parliament and this legalises 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local and national elections.

Given how I used to give assemblies, educational workshops and other in-depth talks to a wide range of students for years through my Outreach work, this is something I would love to return to at some point in the future.

Anyway, please vote in your local elections.

You can make a much stronger impact on your community than you ever thought possible.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

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Political Psychology References and Further Reading

Frank, M., Stadelmann, D., & Torgler, B. (2023). Higher turnout increases incumbency advantages: Evidence from mayoral elections. Economics & Politics, 35(2), 529-555.Morales, M., & Belmar, F. (2022). Clientelism, turnout and incumbents’ performance in Chilean local government elections. Social Sciences, 11(8), 361.

https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/news/2024/results-general-election-4-july-2024

https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/low-turnout-at-local-elections-in-england-why-it-matters-and-how-to-improve-it/

Kostelka, F., Krejcova, E., Sauger, N., & Wuttke, A. (2023). Election frequency and voter turnout. Comparative Political Studies, 56(14), 2231-2268.

Maškarinec, P. (2024). Geography of voter turnout in Slovak local elections (1994–2018): The effects of size and contagion on local electoral participation. Transactions in GIS, 28(7), 2113-2133.

Orford, S., Rallings, C., Thrasher, M., & Borisyuk, G. (2008). Investigating differences in electoral turnout: the influence of ward-level context on participation in local and parliamentary elections in Britain. Environment and Planning A, 40(5), 1250-1268.

Rallings, C., & Thrasher, M. (2007). The turnout ‘gap’and the costs of voting–a comparison of participation at the 2001 general and 2002 local elections in England. Public Choice, 131(3), 333-344.

Wu, L., Rogers, B., & Wang, G. (2023). Explaining voting participation gaps in local government elections in rural China. Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, 8(1), 307-330.

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