by Trevor Fisher
The 2017 UK election threw up data suggesting that age is more important than class in voting in Westminster elections. While there is still a class element, the big issue was that the older a voter was the more likely to vote Tory*. The youth surge, though still unexplained, particularly in the university towns, is sufficiently important to panic the Tories into considering modifying tuition fees according to the Mail on Sunday of 2nd July.
As I said in my blog on voter registration, published on Labour Uncut and on the ProgPol site, “for the future, the bias in the system has to be tackled. For the future, its voter registration, Stupid!” What won the first Clinton election victory was famously the economy. For the UK, the ability to get the young to register and vote, which will have to be repeated constantly as ‘youth’s a stuff will not endure’, must be woven into the DNA of progressive activity.
The YouGov poll after the election (fieldwork 9-13th June, sample over 50,000) (table 1) showed that both the turnout to vote and willingness to vote Tory increased with age, two thirds of first time voters voting Labour in 2017, but only 19% of over seventies. First time voters were least likely to vote, over seventies the most likely to vote – a stable population able to use postal votes which have now become an alternative way to vote. Table 2 emphasises that class is no longer the key determinant of voting.
