The coming General Election should be one of the liveliest for some time: the polls suggest a close fight, the recession and public services are hot topics and the expenses scandal has candidates on their toes. But YouGov reports around 30% of young people between 18 and 24 as "non-voters"; that is, won't vote or don't know - the highest proportion of any age group.
Low turnout among the young is nothing new, but this level of interest is disappointing. You'd think that with the inevitable rise in university fees, plus the looming pay-back of their share of the bail-out debt, not to mention climate change, they would be more interested in participating in their democracy! On top of that, a relentless campaign of four to five months could create wider voter fatigue.
The UK's public service broadcasters can take steps to avoid this. Channel 4's remit means it will bring in a wide and varied range of voices. The BBC has built an unrivalled service at local and regional level, and fields a big team of specialist political reporters.
One of the most useful services they will provide is to separate analysis of the issues from campaign strategy. The audience has long been educated to recognise that the thrice daily press conferences and photo opportunities in an election are not news, but rather an attempt to win hearts and minds.
Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, was one of the first broadcast journalists to examine these techniques thoroughly. In the 1992 election, he produced a series of programmes on campaign methods and messages, along with reporter John Rentoul, now at The Independent on Sunday, for BBC1's On the Record series. They showed how British parties borrowed from their US counterparts. Exposure of these techniques is now regarded as essential information for voters and is routinely covered on Newsnight and BBC news programmes.
But voters expect much more than straight reporting: they also look for in-depth analysis of issues - the economy, public services, the environment, the war. It is here that the range and depth of BBC journalism can provide its greatest service, along with forensic questioning of candidates.
It sounds obvious but as recently as 2002, in a post-mortem on election coverage, BBC channel controllers complained bitterly that there had been no real debate about policy. For the political parties, avoiding debate about the issues had been a deliberate strategy, but it was one that arguably the BBC should have done more to counter.
Today, you might think the BBC is in a better position to avoid this trap, with its continuous news channel allowing ample air time for more detailed coverage. But straight news reports can't take the place of the kind of in-depth analysis provided by long form journalism, of which there sometimes seems a diminishing amount on television, even on the BBC.
Could it be that a dearth of in-depth analysis fosters the bemusement and agnosticism of all those 18- to 25-year-olds who say they don't intend to vote? Without depth, a long campaign will stoke people's prejudices - fed by the expenses scandal - that all politicians are empty and self-serving.
It's a view characterised and reinforced, some might say, by the popular political comedy The Thick of It. None of its characters, politicians or public servants, has any redeeming feature nor any interest in power except for its own sake.
The danger is that into this vacuum creeps a culture of caustic cynicism and aggression, which turns people off and is bad for the BBC, never mind democracy.
But it's not all bleak. If you are besieged by as many messages as the young are, you need to be highly resilient about what you want to know and how to find it. And this will be an election with many more and better sources of information than ever before. Blogs and specialist websites, along the lines of the excellent RealClear Politics which enlivened and informed the US presidential campaign, look set to provide high-quality analysis on a scale that didn't exist before.
The BBC already provides this enrichment through bloggers like Nick Robinson. And John Humphreys writes on the YouGov site. We could also see the current dominance of right-wing political websites in Britain, like Taxpayers Alliance or Conservative Home, stirring the left into providing equally high-quality websites of its own.
One might say that this multiplicity of sources means voters will end up better served than ever, with a greater range of voices and styles available to them. But this would be to forget that television itself has a greater power than any other creative medium, including the web, to influence and inform the public.
And, if the result is a hung parliament, or small majority, broadcast journalism which sets the standard for impartiality and independence will, pace James Murdoch, be more in demand than ever.
