Editorials

#YEAR12PROBLEMS

12 June 2017

By Lauren E. White

Young people and the election

You might be sick of hearing about the election, but when the election has a direct link to you and your life, you might think differently.

Lots of us on the ground expected young turnout in this election to be high: after all, Jeremy Corbyn is popular with the majority of us and Theresa May? Er, not so much…

According to Sky News, the voter turnout for 18- to 24-year-olds was 66.4 per cent – a huge leap from 43 per cent two years ago in 2015’s election. What we can see from that is obvious: something mobilised us and, judging by other data, it wasn’t the Tories.

A survey of 14,000 people after they had voted by Lord Ashcroft (definitely not biased as he donated lots of his money to the Tories) found that two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds voted Labour. And more than half of voters aged 25-34 voted for Jeremy Corbyn as well.

So not only did Theresa May call this snap election based on the premise people would be too frightened to vote for anyone other than her because “chaos” would ensue, but she called it thinking that young people wouldn’t vote because they never bother to.

Well, sorry about that Theresa and the Tories (perhaps the worst name for a band ever), but things aren’t going to work out. This hung parliament result isn’t a negative one for young voters. Why? Because they created the largest swing of the vote to Labour since 1945. This isn’t a failure to them, but an encouragement.

The snap election was a hole dug by Mrs May (as seen in the featured photo of this week’s column) and when the next election comes (probably in two years), there will be even more young people ready and waiting to vote for Labour and boot them out of power.

Well done to my fellow young people for turning out. This election has been the best demonstration of why and how your vote is useful. Look who has survived this election unscathed (Corbyn) versus who hasn’t (May). And it is down to you.

Thanks, guys.

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