Jersey voter turnout flops at the polls

Monday 17 February 2020

The results are in… Jersey has scored lowest for voter turnout in a 'health check' of 41 countries across the world.

The ‘Better Life Index’ ranks the 41 nations across the world according to 11 different social, environmental and economic categories.

Whilst Jersey ranked 19^th overall, scoring very highly for jobs and earnings, personal safety, health status and community, its civic engagement lagged way behind its global counterparts.

Pictured: Jersey ranked lowest in the OECD countries for civic engagement (Statistics Jersey/Better Life Index).

The index is calculated according to a framework developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). which promotes policies to improve the economic and social wellbeing of people around the world. 

One of the categories each of the countries were scored against was ‘civic engagement’ based on the voter turnout in each location. In this area, the island fell way below the global average based on turnout at the May 2018 States Assembly elections. 

Jersey’s level of 43.4% was almost a quarter lower than the OECD country average of 68%. 

Considering this in relation to islanders’ confidence in the government, the Statistics Jersey report on the ‘Better Life Index’ states: “The measure of civic engagement used in the Better Life Index, voter turnout, is an indicator of both citizen participation in the political process and of public trust in Government.”

The island’s level of trust in the government also ranked fairly low in comparison to the OECD average, putting it in the same league as countries like Brazil, Colombia, Latvia and Poland. 

Pictured: Jersey's trust in its government also lagged below the OECD average. (Statistics Jersey/Better Life Index)

However, Jersey scored particularly highly in the health and community sections.

Explaining the factors which contribute to the health score, the report states: “For 2016-18 the life expectancy from birth in Jersey was 82.6 years, a figure nearly two and a half years greater than the average across the OECD Jersey rated their general health relatively highly; 81% of adults in Jersey reported that they were in either good or very good health compared with the OECD average of 69%.”

For community, the report says: “The indicator for the community dimension is the percentage of people who have someone they can rely on in case of need. The percentage of people in Jersey that did (96%) was higher than in all OECD countries except for Iceland (top ranked) and New Zealand (with which Jersey was joint second).” 

Pictured: Jersey has stayed the same overall, but there have been some changes in its individual categories since last year (Statistics Jersey/Better Life Index).

When it comes to housing, however, the island slipped back down below the global average.

Statistics Jersey explained: “People in Jersey have more living space, on average, than people in the UK and in the majority of OECD countries. In Jersey, each resident occupies an average of 2.1 rooms compared to 1.9 in the UK and the OECD average of 1.8.

"However, average spending on housing in Jersey accounted for over a quarter (26%) of household net adjusted disposable income in 2016, some 6 percentage points (pp) greater than the OECD average. In Jersey only 0.5% of households did not have an indoor flushing toilet for the sole use of their household, compared with 4.4% across the OECD.”

In comparison to Jersey’s index in 2018, its overall ‘Better Life Index’ stayed the same at 19^th out of 41, but there have been some changes in the individual categories themselves.