The IPPR thinktank found that only 52% of the British adult population cast their ballots on 4 July, making it the lowest turnout by share of population since universal suffrage, according to a report.
Just over half of British adults voted in the 2024 general election, marking the lowest turnout since the vote was extended to all adults over 21 in 1928.
Turnout has been reported as the lowest since 2001, measured by votes counted as a proportion of adults who have registered to vote.
However, the IPPR noted that the figures are even lower as a share of the whole adult population, meaning if non-voting was a party, it would have the largest share of support by far.
Parth Patel, a senior research fellow at the IPPR and co-author of the report, described the fact that only one in two adults voted this year as “shocking.”
“If democracy is collective self-rule and only half of us are voting, you do have to ask about the other half, who politics and policymaking are less responsive to as a result,” he said.
Amid concerns over low turnout, Labour is planning to introduce an elections bill next week after promising reform. It is expected to lower the voting age from 18 to 16 and introduce automatic voter registration to make it easier for people to turn up at a polling station and cast their ballot.
The IPPR report also found that seats with a larger share of older people, wealthy homeowners, and white individuals had much higher turnout rates than constituencies with a smaller share of people from those demographics.
It calculated that turnout was 11% higher in constituencies with the highest proportion of over 64-year-olds compared with the lowest. Turnout was also 13% higher in constituencies with the highest proportion of homeowners.
In terms of ethnicity and religion, turnout was 7% lower in constituencies with the highest proportion of people from minority ethnic backgrounds compared with the lowest, and 10% lower in constituencies with the highest proportion of Muslim people.
The IPPR report stated: “Put simply, the ‘haves’ speak much louder than the ‘have-nots’ in British democracy.
“Those who stand to benefit most from democratic policymaking are those with the weakest voices in the room. This is one way to make sense of policy puzzles in the heart of our democracy. Why have we allowed housing to become so unaffordable? Tolerated income and wealth inequality to rise and remain high? Protected pensions but not social security for working people?”
The report added: “The new government has the chance to break out of the democratic doom loop between political participation and policy responsiveness.”
There have long been concerns about trying to get more people to vote to improve democratic outcomes, but the previous Conservative government only added an additional barrier by requiring photo ID.
Polling suggested last week that more than 400,000 people may have been prevented from voting in the general election because they lacked the necessary ID, with those from minority ethnic communities more than twice as likely to have experienced this.
Of those surveyed by pollsters More In Common, 3.2% said they were turned away at least once last Thursday, which if reflected across the UK would equate to more than 850,000 people. Of these, more than half said they either did not return or came back and were still unable to vote.
Labour is not pledging to change the policy in government, beyond considering expanding the list of acceptable documents, which currently includes six types of passes for older people but no equivalent ones for younger people.
