US Edition ALMOST every politician at the moment has the uneasy feeling that he or she is losing touch with the voters.
The politicians huff and puff. They work their hearts out. But the voters yawn and last week's Gallup poll for The Daily Telegraph suggested that turn-out on June 7 would be lower than at any time - barring 1918 - since the 19th century.
Not only are the politicians worried. Academic conferences ponder "the crisis of democracy" and political exclusion is clearly about to join social exclusion on the agenda of almost every reputable think-tank. But is low turn-out really a sign of political malaise? A good case can be made out that, on the contrary, it is a sign of political health.
Turn-out in elections is falling not only in this country but in the United States and throughout western Europe. A trans-national trend clearly deserves trans-national explanations - and two suggest themselves straightaway. Both are more cheering than depressing.
The first is that most Western societies are now less "tribal" than they were half a century ago. Countries like Germany, France and Italy in the 1940s and 1950s were deeply divided along religious lines, with clericals opposed to laiques and Protestants to Catholics.
Even countries without deep religious divisions were almost invariably divided along class lines, with workers and mill owners preparing to confront each other. Moreover, these divisions were not merely sociological; they were often deeply emotional. Workers hated capitalists. Capitalists feared workers. Catholics and Protestants alike feared the forces of militant atheism.
Anyone who turned up at a political meeting in the post-war period could feel a palpable sense of "us" and "them". It is no accident that a large proportion of the highest electoral turn-outs ever in Britain were recorded in Northern Ireland, the most deeply divided part of the country. Turn-out in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1951 was 93.4 per cent.
Today, except in Northern Ireland and places like the Balkans, those old tribal feelings and loyalties have largely disappeared. Most Western countries are far more at ease with themselves than in the past. The voters may still be discontented with their politicians but they are far more contented with one another.
The second explanation is related. Not only are the voters today less tribal than in the past; the political parties are much less far apart ideologically than they used to be. The Communist parties of France and Italy have all but disappeared. Left-wing parties everywhere have largely abandoned socialism.
Party politics in Europe and America today is almost entirely about the successful management of welfare capitalism. Even in this country, where the Conservative and Labour parties were never as radically opposed as typical Right and Left parties on the Continent, the ideological gap has narrowed.
In 1950-51 it was possible for a Labour supporter to believe that if the Tories came to power they would declare war on Russia and/or bring back mass unemployment. A Conservative supporter could be forgiven for believing that Labour would nationalise the whole of industry and fight the class war with renewed ferocity.
After all, Labour's Aneurin Bevan had described the Tories as "lower than vermin". Not surprisingly, turn-out at both the 1950 and 1951 General Elections soared to more than 80 per cent - the highest since the First World War.
The fact that a far smaller proportion of people will vote on June 7 owes a great deal to the narrowing of the divisions between the Conservative and Labour parties that has taken place recently, especially since Tony Blair began to shift Labour to the Right.
Another factor that will undoubtedly depress turn-out this time is not exactly a sign of democratic health but is certainly not a sign of democratic malaise. Almost everyone thinks Labour is going to win - by a wide margin. But elections whose outcomes are utterly predictable are almost invariably low turn-out elections. People ask why they should bother to vote.
That undoubtedly accounts in part for the low turn-out four years ago, when a Labour victory seemed inevitable. The highest turn-out in recent decades came in 1992, when it was far from clear - even to the opinion polls - which side was going to win.
Putting the matter another way, turn-out in individual constituencies in Britain tends to be lower in safe seats than in marginals but in 2001 the whole country seems, in the eyes of most voters, to have become one gigantic safe seat.
There is, to be sure, a genuine problem about low turn-out. Thousands of people, especially young people, are positively switched off politics and politicians. They find politicians ill-mannered, irrelevant and often unintelligible. There is anger and frustration out there as well as apathy.
But too much hand-wringing about the expected low turn-out on June 7 is misplaced. We do not, politically, live in "interesting times". Just provide the voters with a closely fought election at which a great deal is at stake and, make no mistake, they will again turn out in their droves.
- Anthony King is Professor of Government at Essex University.