Are we heading for another youthquake in this election?

Analysis: Sean O'Grady looks at how likely the rise in voter registration among young people is to affect the general election’s outcome

Wednesday 27 November 2019 17:46 GMT
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Corbyn supporters await the Labour leader in Islington ahead of 2017’s general election
Corbyn supporters await the Labour leader in Islington ahead of 2017’s general election

Will 2019 be the year (at last) of the youthquake? And, if it is, does that mean Labour would win its first general election since 2005?

Certainly the surge in last-minute voter registration looks an impressive one. Some 3.2 million people have registered to vote since the election was called on 29 October. Of these, about two-thirds were by people aged 34 or under, and of those around 1.15 million were by the under-25s. The number of under-25s registered to vote at the same point in the 2017 general election was 715,000. So the figure is significantly higher now, by about 60 per cent, driven by greater awareness and the relative ease of online registration. Online registration greatly outnumbers paper applications now.

The key psephological fact is of course that the younger the voter, the more likely they are to support Labour (and Remain), and the less likely to back the Conservatives and the Brexit Party (and Leave). The obvious hope on the left is that this army of young voters will make an important difference at this election.

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