Shameful vote or hidden vote, why do we deny our actions?

Supporting a candidate in election season does not necessarily imply going out to campaign for him or her, or for their party. On the contrary, many of the voters choose to hide their support for certain candidates until you get to the polls.

This is what is known as “hidden vote” or “shameful vote”, a phenomenon that Ecuadorian voters do not escape when they lie about the candidate they plan to vote for or hide behind the postulate “the vote is secret”, to Do not reveal your political leanings.

Why hide or deny the vote?

There are several reasons why a voter might not want to reveal the candidate or party they support.

• Fear of reproach for the prejudices or stigmas associated with the candidate or political movement of their choice.
• Indecision. They are not informed about their vote and avoid making their indecision public.
• They do not want to influence other people with their decision.
• They fear revealing their political leanings.

“Ecuador has a long history of elections in which citizens have been ashamed of who they are going to vote for,” says analyst Franklin Romero, director of the Click Report pollster, consulted by this newspaper. He claims that the amount of embarrassing or hidden votes reaches a minimum 10% and can go up to 15% in all elections.

Medardo Oleas, former president of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and Oswaldo Moreno, political consultant, refer to undecided vote in different contexts.

For Oleas, in Ecuador there is indecision and confusion among the voters due to the large number of candidates, parties without ideologies and poor promotion. Romero agrees with this criterion, who points out that due to the bad electoral communication of the candidates, the citizens have not identified who they are going to vote for and indecision has manifested.

This may be the reason why the results of the ‘exit polls’, obtained by the pollsters, differ from the final result with the scrutiny of the minutes. And that affects the choice of citizens who are guided by trends to decide their vote. (YO)