From Electoral Participation Toward Political Awareness: A Critical Analysis of First-Time Voters in the 2024 General Election in Banda Aceh

Abstract

This study critically examines the political participation of first-time voters in the 2024 General Election in Banda Aceh, focusing on the conceptual gap between electoral participation and political awareness. The principal research gap lies in the tendency of voter-participation studies to treat turnout at polling stations (TPS) as a singular proxy for democratic quality, while the dimension of political awareness has received insufficient scholarly attention in the Acehnese context. The study adopts a qualitative approach using library research and document analysis. Secondary data were drawn from academic literature, official documents issued by electoral management bodies, statistical data, survey reports, and verified news coverage. The findings indicate that voter participation in Banda Aceh increased from 78.67 percent in the 2019 General Election to approximately 81 to 81.48 percent in the 2024 General Election. However, this procedural increase does not necessarily indicate a corresponding improvement in the political awareness of first-time voters. Their political preferences are formed through a hybrid process involving interactions among social media, family, educational institutions, peers, religious figures, and gampong-based social ecosystems. The novelty of this study lies in its proposed multi-stage analytical model of transformation from electoral participation to political awareness, which incorporates Aceh's local socio-cultural context. The study contributes theoretically to the development of the concept of substantive political participation and, at the practical level, offers recommendations for voter-education reform that is contextual, digitally oriented, and grounded in local social ecosystems.