This fact prompts a paradox since never before has New Zealand experienced higher levels of education and literacy, and never has it reached such high technological development, which enables information to be stored, accessed, and circulated so rapidly and effectively. yet, these achievements are accompanied by a reduction in voting, arguably the simplest form of political participation.&nbsp.

Voter turnout refers to the percentage of qualified voters who cast their ballot in an election and it is estimated by taking the total voter numbers as a proportion of the ‘voting-age population’ (Wattenberg, 2010, p.42). For a country to be said to have had a declining voter turnout, its average percentage levels in the past three decades must have decreased by at least 2% in comparison to those of the first three decades. If the comparison of the two eras indicates +2% increases, then the voter turnout number is said to have increased, while a variation within the confines of -2% and +2% shows that the turnout is stable. However, such strict rules no longer apply in recent democracies with New Zealand being not an exception because periods of elections vary greatly (Kitschelt and Wilkinson, 2007, p.112).

Statistics show that the number of voter turnouts in New Zealand has been on a decline since the 1950s. In the 1950s, the level of voter turnout in the country was roughly 91%, which dropped to 84% in the 1960s and later to 83% in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the level of voter turnout in New Zealand experienced a slight upsurge and hit 86% (Boston, 2009, p.54). However, it experienced sharp declines in the following decades with statistics showing that it was approximately 79% and 76% in the 1990s and in the 2000s respectively (The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, 2012, para3-9). In 2011, voter turnout in the country was reported to have dramatically declined to 69%.&nbsp.