Elections 2025 Lesson 2 - Low voter turnout

Elections 2025 Lesson 2 – Low voter turnout

Sep 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – If a rich man holds an open house, and invites everyone-from friend to stranger-to enter the gates and partake of the banquet table, and they shake their heads in rejection what does that say? What does it say when those holding their noses and turning their faces from that tempting banquet are so famished that a good meal would be a godsend? After all the rich promises and invitations, after the known conditions of need that bedevil so many Guyanese, what to make of the low voter turnout in the elections of 2025? There is one positive: some Guyanese came out and voted, which indicates that there is some interest in who governs Guyana and how it is governed.

Low voter turnout not for Guyanese consider a side event, such as local government, but for the big dance party, i.e., national elections. In 2020, it was 70%. The first guestimates for 2025 hovered between 60 to 65%. With no census figures available, then GECOM’s list is what’s left for a denominator. Thus, about 58% voter turnout could be confirmed when this is over. At 58% voter turnout, this means that two out of five eligible Guyanese voters stayed away from last Monday’s polls. In a cricket match, a score of around 58 isn’t devastating, but it isn’t impressive, either. Because there was so much left off the scoreboard. This is one way that I am reading the low voter turnout.

Another way, and I think that this is undeniable, is that the voters who stayed away gave the government and opposition parties the back of their hands. ‘I don’t have time for what you are selling.’ And ‘whatever it is, I am not interested.’ It takes a lot to push people over the edge, good deal and plenty of promises and all. What makes this unfathomable, even more troubling, is an appreciation of where Guyana is, and all that Guyana has and offers for the future. The present is gloomy for many Guyanese, and yet what they said to the politicians from left to right was get lost. At least that is how I am interpreting the low voter turnout from last week. No pressure of squeezing time from work, battling traffic, and hustling to the place of polling. There was the luxury of a national holiday, and all twelve hours of it waiting to welcome a barrage of voters. Guyanese still shrugged their shoulders disdainfully, and refused to be drawn into the web of a polling station.

Now there is another way to interpret the low voter turnout. Caution: friends and countryfolk in the PPP are not going to like the next few sentences. I will try to be gentle, even bland. Fact: the PPP captured quite a percentage of those who actually voted. Congrats! Now for the downside, the upsetting news. First, total the votes won by all the opposition parties. Next, to that total add the voters that stayed away. Conclusion: as well as the PPP may think that it did, there is no denying the fact that it is a minority government, numerically speaking. That is, all the opposition voted against it, and that low voter turnout of approx. 58% stands as an unsparing referendum on the PPP Government’s and its leadership performance in the years 2020-2025. The same goes for confidence in opposition parties.

Moreover, the PPP had all the money, all the control, all the opportunities, and all that it could have gained in 2025 was another 9,000 votes over its 2020 elections number of 233,336. Check the arithmetic, but that translates to 1800 additional votes per year. After five record budgets and well over $4 trillion Guyana dollars in its hands, this has to be a referendum on all the good that the government said that it did. Without going too heavy, it is confirmation, I would say, of what I have been telling the government. There is much more that needs to be done, of which cost-of-living has to be a priority. In the spirit of a new era, I refrain from reiterating what has been bad. I think that it was the honorable Vice President, Dr. Jagdeo, who said that the low turnout was ‘concerning, bears some looking into…’

When so many voters stayed away, it means that they were more than indifferent, more than distrustful, and more than disengaged. It means that they didn’t feel incentivized enough nor inspired enough. They had had enough. Political credibility hit bottom. One must wonder that if WIN’s Mohamed was not part of the electoral picture, where that would have left voter turnout. Just below 50% looks reasonable.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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