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There’s a sure-fire way of making sure you’re on the ­winning side when the polls close this Thursday.

But it’s not one that anyone who considers themselves a democrat should be proud of.

The “winning party” in all recent elections, and this is the third in five years, is the DVs – the Don’t Voters.

They represent more than either Labour or Tory.

Around a third of those eligible and registered to vote can’t be bothered to place their X in the box.

Whether it’s cynicism, apathy, ­arrogance, laziness or none of the above, a potentially decisive number of people are, by historical standards, expected to check out of making a choice in an election which will shape the future of Britain for a generation.

(Image: Getty Images)

Just by not checking in.

It could make such a difference if they, or even a proportion of them, did.

Take Boris Johnson ’s own seat of Uxbridge. (I hope somebody does.)

He held it with what would once have been seen as a safe majority of 5,034 after 23,760 voters plumped for him at the ballot box in 2017.

But almost as many – 22,798 of registered voters – did not take part. That’s just 962 fewer than voted for Mr Johnson.

No wonder Labour ­activists are pouring in to unseat a sitting Prime Minister for the first time since 1931.

Uxbridge is just outside the 142 seats where there are more DVs than people who voted for the sitting MP.

(Image: VICKIE FLORES/EPA-EFE/REX)

And in 551 of Parliament’s 650 seats – 80 per cent – the number of DVs exceeds the majority of the sitting MP.

If these figures don’t cause alarm you are ­probably one of those don’t-care DVs.

In too many cases – 14 million – voters live in seats that haven’t changed hands since the last world war. So people think their vote doesn’t, or won’t, make a ­difference.

They have a point. But in many cases their votes really could make a difference.

In 11 seats, a potentially prevailing majority in a possible hung Parliament, the majority is fewer than 100 votes.

(Image: Sunday Mirror)

Proportional representation has been raised as a solution.

But when that was put to the vote in a 2011 referendum it was decisively rejected on a turnout of 42 per cent.

Compulsory voting has been floated as a solution to voter turnout, which is in decline.

Of 22 countries where it applies – including Australia, Austria and Belgium – only half enforce it.

Here there is a very British resentment against compulsion of any sort.

The only way to ensure fuller ­participation in the choice of who runs the country is to appeal to the ­responsibility and duty of voters to take a material part in that decision.

If people choose to remain in the “unheard third” they have no right to whinge when a government does things they don’t like.

Nor if there comes a point when we have to ask: Whatever did happen to that old thing called democracy?