Labour have done so much better than expected this election.How? Well, a lot of (old) pundits are on TV saying it’s the youth vote wot did it. Labour, who have long been very popular with young people, were polling at 67% with young people ahead of the election, and according to various sources, the youth voter turnout was of a similar proportion.
According to Sky News, youth voter turnout was 66.4% compared to 43% in 2015. There’s also a very big Internet Rumour that 72% of young people went to the polls. Let’s be conservative (small ‘c’) and go with 66.4%, and we’ve got the highest youth voter turnout since 1992. In 1992, today’s current 18-24 year olds hadn’t even been born yet! The young people who voted in 1992 might even be today’s young people’s parents!
Heading up to the election, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t only attract young voters, but actively courted them, doing interviews with grime musicians, youth publications and, hey, remember all those Corbyn x Nike t-shirts? And the memes? It’s also worth noting that, alongside the gimmicks, his party promised to cut tuition fees, re-nationalise the train network, take a softer approach to Brexit, and he ran on a positive campaign, heading off to huge rallies and meeting with people over and over again to hear their thoughts and, in a lot of cases, receive his praise.
Driven with a bit more machismo than Ed Miliband’s Milifandom, Corbyn’s youth surge saw him dubbed ‘the absolute boy’ by brocialists and other assorted left-wingers alike (note: even Lena Dunham shared a picture of a badge saying ‘Get on board with the absolute boy #votelabour’, urging her British fans to go for the red team). And new voters seemed to like his personality - with his jam-making and his allotment and his accidentally cool grey tracksuit, he doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not. And, unlike Theresa ‘running through wheat fields’ May, he hasn’t hidden his personal self away for fear of not being liked by his voters.
It’s worth remembering that Labour haven’t quite won. They only have 261 seats to the Conservatives’ 318. But. But, considering their 20 point deficit a couple of months ago, it’s a pretty huge gain for them.
There’s been a huge swing to Labour in student areas, like Canterbury, which has been a Conservative stronghold for 99 years. It is now a Labour seat, following a social media drive to get students registered to vote which caused 8,000 new voter registrations in the area.
In general, of the two million people nationally who registered to vote ahead of this election, young people accounted for the highest number of them, with 57,987 young people registering their interest the very day that May called the snap election.
Is it time for young people to pat themselves on the back? Well, democracy is always A Good Thing, and high voter turnout being more equal across age groups is A Really Good Thing. Regardless of exactly how many young people voted, if the turnout is anywhere near as high as rumoured, it's going to be a game-changer. Not necessarily now, but certainly in future. There’s been a long history of politicians refusing to reach out to young people or offer them decent policies because they don't expect their votes, but with young people actually voting, all this could change and politicians of all stripes could start doing much more to court the youth vote…we’ll keep you posted.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.