Elections Coming But Young Voters Ghost the Ballots

Feb 21 , 2026. By MEKDELAWIT MELAKU ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER ) , BEZAWIT HULUAGER ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

Barely three months before polling day, national politics is receding into the background of many young people's daily lives. Young respondents aged 18 to 30 encounter politics only in passing on social media, report MEKDELAWIT MELAKU & BEZAWIT HULUAGER, FOR-TUNE STAFF WRITERS.

The national election is approaching with a strangely muted face. What once stirred streets, campuses, and café arguments now passes many young Ethiopians as background noise.

For some, the vote barely exists in their daily routines, despite an official timetable that promises a shift in national momentum.

Rahel Murka, 31, only learned about the election a few days ago. Nearly three months remain until polling day, yet movements from political parties, voters and the national electoral board feel quieter than in previous cycles.

For Rahel, participation is less a civic ritual than a logistical calculation. She plans to vote only if it fits around her work schedule, as she did last time.

A survey conducted by this newspaper among nearly 150 respondents aged 18 to 30 captures that cooling mood. Interest in the election represented 33pc. Of the 142 respondents, 46.5pc are not planning to vote, 26pc have not yet decided and 26pc intend to vote.

Election-related information is among the least followed topics. Close to 40pc are not tracking political news, and a majority rely on social media for whatever politics they encounter.

The survey mirrors Rahel’s habits. She has low exposure to major broadcasting platforms and relies on social media as her primary source. For her, voting is a question of convenience.

“I won’t be willing to sacrifice more than what it takes,” she told Fortune.

Unlike Rahel, others speak of duty, but without hope.

Samson Kassahun, 23, known as Simon to his friends, will vote because he feels he should, not because he expects change.

“I didn’t see hope in the election from my family and friends,” he said. “Everyone has given up.”

This will be the second time he votes. But, he barely remembers the last and felt it as almost forced.

Samson has lived in the Gofa area. He does not see the current atmosphere resembling an election season. The communication he notices is jargon-filled and addressed to experts rather than citizens. Only a few parties have promoted their social media accounts, and even those efforts, he felt, were limited and remote.

“It feels like communication between experts, not to me,” he said.

A public health graduate, he has refused to work in his field due to low pay. Most opportunities are in rural areas where limited infrastructure makes life difficult. His expectations are direct. Satisfactory job opportunities and taming inflation and curtailing living costs. He says he will vote for a party where citizens’ politics are prioritised over “ethnic politics” and insists this distinction will guide his choice.

For Rahel and Samson, voting is not new. Yet among poll respondents, 56.3pc have never voted. In a country where the majority of the population is young, not being registered signals withdrawal from national undertakings.

Even among those who follow the election, attention remains uneven. For many, election information is the least-watched part of their news diet, even when they scroll through political content. Social media, the main channel for most respondents, does not provide the shared rhythm of broadcast schedules and can leave people with fragments rather than a clear timeline of registration, candidates and rules.

Rahel’s late discovery of the election uncovers that gap. Samson, by contrast, knows the vote is coming but sees little that addresses his age group or immediate concerns.

Between these profiles sit the undecided 26pc and the larger bloc of non-participants, the 46.5pc who say they are not planning to vote.

These figures pose a blunt question about what it takes to turn a formal timetable into a public event. In that space, convenience, fatigue and distrust compete with civic language, and the election risks becoming background noise rather than a contested moment over the country’s direction.

Some political parties have begun social media campaigns, including the incumbent Prosperity Party (PP). Role shifts are visible.

The Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice, a.k.a. EZEMA in its Amharic acronym, led by Brehanu Nega (PhD), is urging the public to take part in the process, while the governing party is asking to be retained in office. Among those who say they will not vote, 42pc cite lack of trust in the electoral process, about 30pc believe their voice does not matter, and 29pc dislike the candidates.

For Endale Kebede, a 38-year-old research and marketing development officer, disengagement is deliberate. Born in Shero Meda, a neighbour of Addis Abeba, and living there for nearly three decades, this election no longer matters to him. He insisted his decision is an informed judgment grounded in his college studies of political science.

He pointed to what he called a narrow electoral ecosystem that does not fully support parties other than the governing one.

“It doesn’t even fulfil election standards,” he said.

Endale argued that parties are campaigning only in neighbouring areas, limiting exposure and reducing their chances of winning.

“Agendas and policies lack clear presentation,” he told Fortune. “Personalities overshadow substance, research is thin, and inclusiveness within communities is limited.”

Endale has voted three times. Even though he understands the implications of abstaining, he has chosen to sit this one out.

“All I am seeing is emotional election propaganda based on opposing each other, not a sincere desire to change the country,” he said.

Endale reads recent history as proof that political power has changed hands more through bullets than ballots.

An election two decades ago is still remembered as the most contested Ethiopia had seen, yet even that process was disrupted. An opposition party, Coalition for Unity & Democracy (CUD, known in the local parlance as “Qinijit”, claimed to have won several seats that the ruling EPRDF conceded. But the results were later mired by violent conflicts, leading to security forces killing close to 200 people in Addis Abeba, and the mass arrest and later trial of opposition leaders, including Brehanu Nega (PhD).

Six national elections have been conducted since the constitutional order was installed in the mid-1990s. The last was postponed due to the COVID pandemic and later held under the ruling party, which changed from the EPRDF to the Prosperity Party, led by Abiy Ahmed (PhD).

Elections are meant to empower citizens while holding political parties vying for office accountable. Yet for the past five years, political parties have had almost no public voice until election season reappeared. Due to conflict during the last cycle, the Tigray Regional State did not vote and has not been represented in the federal legislative houses.

For Endale, this confirms his conviction that his voice will not matter. Some of the political figures who voiced concerns are now in prison, many of them public figures, including members of opposition parties in the federal legislature.

According to officials at the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), preparations are moving forward. The Chairperson, Melatework Hailu, university students are being assessed as part of a broader registration analysis, and the regional electoral stations have been categorised into green, yellow, and red areas, mirroring their security risk.

Green refers to areas deemed very safe and fully eligible to hold elections; yellow covers sensitive or unstable areas; red refers to high-risk areas where elections will not be conducted.

Melatework disclosed that “most areas” in the Oromia Regional State fall under the green category, while the Amhara Regional State includes stations in all three. According to the Chairperson, Tigray Regional State has yet to provide updates on safety and displacement following the Board’s request.

“The safety and security investigation will continue until the very end,” she said at a press briefing she gave at Skylight Hotel off the Africa Avenue (Bole Road), on February 12, 2026. “Anything can happen at any given moment, even in areas considered safe.”

However, the total number of polling stations for the upcoming election has yet to be announced, leaving the scale of the operation incomplete. If the previous election serves as any guide, 38.2 million voters were registered, where 34 million ballots were cast in 49,407 polling stations.

No fewer than 169 civil society organisations, including the Consortium of Ethiopian Human Rights Organisations (CEHRO), have registered to observe the electoral process. With the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia, foreign observers are being invited to monitor the election.

Civil society and party officials debate how deep youth rejection runs and what drives it.

For Mesud Gebeyehu, executive director of CEHRO, youth disengagement is not an evidence-based rejection of elections. Many young people are eligible voters for the first time, and he warned that they are increasingly absorbing biases from social media. He also blamed the lack of representation.

“Political party candidates currently don’t match the age profile of the youth,” he told Fortune.

When elections take place, youth form the bulk of voters; when instability follows, they also bear the consequences. Delayed party activities and a visible coldness toward the election, Mesud said, mean civil society organisations and the election board should double down on their efforts.

Mestawet Semegn, head of the women and youth league of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP), an organisation with a storied past, does not expect a democratic election. She attributed “youth disillusionment” over the elections to a disputed electoral contest two decades ago and the disappointment that followed.

“What is worse than this?” she asked. “It should be no surprise.”

Mestawet see youth mortality and migration have increased in recent years, and that many young people are leaving the country in search of a decent life, driven by the rising cost of living at home.

She flagged the struggles of civil servants allegedly pressured to vote for the ruling party, along with claims that safety net allocations are used for political purposes.

“Party and government have to be separated,” she said.

In Tigray Regional State, which did not vote in the previous elections for the federal legislative houses, fears of renewed disruption persist.

“If there is a war between the interim Administration and Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF), we may not have the chance to hold elections,” said Berehane Atsebeha, communication head of Salsay Weyane, one of the opposition parties active in the region.

He feared losing parliamentary representation again. He argued that the current leadership leaves little space for youth, even though they carry the heaviest burden.

“Outreach to young people in the region has been constrained by weak infrastructure and the collapse of telecommunications systems during the war,” he told Fortune.

Even though a population census has not been conducted in almost two decades, estimates from the World Bank place a median age around 20, and roughly 73.9 million people are expected to be 18 and above in 2025.

For analysts, a growing youth disinterest comes from underrepresentation within political parties and the absence of an equal playing field. Young people, they argue, are among the most affected by political decisions, yet often feel excluded from meaningful participation and leadership roles.

For some of the political commentators interviewed, the methodological gaps in this newspaper's survey resulted from shortcomings in data collection and analysis. They argue the survey could have been more comprehensive and better categorised, particularly in its identification of the geographic distribution of respondents.

Others questioned the timing, claiming that surveys conducted before candidates begin active mobilisation may miss shifts in awareness or engagement.

Officials of NEBE declined to comment.

Solomon Kassahun recalled one of his teachers saying that extreme politics deters professionalism. Using a mathematical metaphor, he characterised the ideal relationship as asymptote lines that move in the same direction but never intersect.

He observed that several young people perceive political parties and the government as interchangeable, shaped by years of exposure to systems in which the distinction is unclear. The sentiment that “what I do doesn’t matter” becomes widespread, he argued, not only in Ethiopia but across parts of Africa.

Although civics and ethics are included in school curricula, he argued that these subjects are often taught as abstract definitions rather than practical disciplines. With economic concerns dominating daily life and media consumption driven by entertainment, political engagement can feel distant.

“Repetition becomes identity,” he said, arguing that consistent messaging shapes collective attitudes. “Politics should strive for collaboration and mutual benefit rather than zero-sum competition, but activism is often conflated with ethnic identity rather than constructive civic participation.”

For political analysts, being exposed to the consequences without having any meaningful part in the process makes disinterest unsurprising. Ongoing violence in multiple regional states, combined with pressures from neighbouring states, adds to uncertainty, while unemployment, rising migration, and inflation dominate daily concerns.

Ayenew Birhanu (PhD), an assistant professor of political science and international relations with more than two decades of experience, traced youth disinterest to “disabling factors for an equal playing ground”, chief among them the lack of sustained peace and credible guarantees for security.

For Ayenew said the broader atmosphere may itself be shaping perception.

“The silence from candidates is deafening,” he said.

He attributed subdued outreach from political actors and media institutions to a process without urgency or genuine contestations.

For many young people, Ayenew observed, democracy feels like a luxury, an abstract ideal rather than a lived experience.

“What ultimately deters many young people is a fading sense of possibility after cycles of unrest, unmet promises, and limited structural change,” Ayenew told Fortune. “Rebuilding engagement requires restoring peace, ensuring credible institutional guarantees, and creating an environment where political competition is fair and visible.”

For Ayenew and other political analysts, it is when young people see tangible evidence that participation can influence outcomes that disinterest begins to give way to civic involvement.

PUBLISHED ON Feb 21,2026 [ VOL 26 , NO 1347]