CAUSES AND PECULIARITIES OF ABSENTEEISM OF A UKRAINIAN VOTER THROUGH THE PRISM OF POLITICAL FACTORS (CASE OF THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of national peculiarities of absenteeism in the context of political motives of electoral behavior. The author reveals the reasons for the non-participation of Ukrainians through the analysis of the 2004 presidential campaign based on his own model of political factors. The relevance of the research topic is that a comprehensive understanding of the electoral motives, behavior, and activity of Ukrainian society will allow taking the necessary steps to mobilize the electorate, increase the level of turnout and electoral culture, minimize the impact of negative factors of participation, and organize effective tools to attract the widest possible range of voters through appropriate incentives. The proper research methodology, based on the functional and normative-value approaches, the principles of interdisciplinarity, integrity, historicism, logical consistency, impartiality, objectivity, completeness and scientific pluralism, helped to realize the tasks set. Within the framework of the above approaches, historical, systemic, structural-functional, and statistical methods of scientific research were used. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time the author analyzed and systematized political factors on the example of the presidential elections in Ukraine and formed an electoral portrait of the Ukrainian voter in the system. The author analyzes the motives for non-participation of Ukrainians within the framework of normativeinstitutional, situational, and value-oriented groups of political factors. Among the first group of influential variables, the author identifies the party and political systems, the type of electoral system, the voter registration system and the availability of alternative voting methods. It has been determined that the indicators of the second group have an extremely strong impact on the electoral turnout. Among them, in particular, are the type of election, the nature of the election campaign (including the level of corruption, expected fraud and abuse), the list and characteristics of the subjects of the electoral confrontation, and the level of competition. The relationship between the variables of the third group and the decision of voters to go to the polls is quite difficult to trace. After all, the factors of the value and ideological subgroup cannot be calculated mathematically, they are rather ephemeral, emotional, and difficult to “catch” and therefore determine their level. Nevertheless, they also influence electoral activity. It is important to note that the election campaign was not chosen randomly, as it was accompanied by a specific set of political characteristics (context, party system, a number of technical variables according to the electoral law) that led to one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the presidential elections in Ukraine.