Votes for 16 and 17 Year-Olds Will Be a Disaster for the Right
A few weeks ago, the Government announced the voting age would be lowered to 16 in time for the next general election.
This will add about 1.4 million people to the electorate in England and Wales, plus another 200,000 in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Of course, not everyone votes and young people have particularly low turnout rates. In recent elections, only about half of them have cast a ballot. This means Labour’s move will increase the number of voters by about 800,000. At the last election, 28.9 million ballots were cast – so we’re talking about an increase of around 3%.
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Get your facts right Noah.
Over 600,000 have joined the new Corbyn party mailing list.
Until we see what their policies are it may not be a bad thing if the 16 and 17 year olds vote for them.
Left wing Denmark has hardline immigration laws and so should we.
We should indeed, but surely you don’t think a Corbyn party would make that happen? I am more of a GlassHalfEmpty person, but expecting Corbyn to cut immigration seemsmore like GlassOverflowing to me 🙂
One can dream.
He’ll want to let his brothers from Hamas and Hezbollah to come and go as they want. And blow us up when appropriate
Well look at the 300 children from Gaza and their families headed to the UK for medical treatment. Even if by some miracle all of these alleged ‘children’ are innocent, we’ve all seen by now what the adults are like over there. We’ve seen the footage, read the reports written by experts and the various polls about their attitudes towards Israel/Oct 7th massacre/Westerners etc. Where are they going to go after their treatment is finished? They’re going to be given permission to stay and then send for large numbers of family to come over and join them. This from the US; ”Today the State Department put out a very disturbing press release. Last week the United States repatriated a U.S. citizen minor from a displaced persons camp in northeast Syria for unification with the child’s family. We thank the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Department of Defense for their assistance. Our interagency efforts have given this child, who has known nothing of life outside of the camps, a future free from the influence and dangers of ISIS terrorism…The only durable solution to the humanitarian and security crisis in these displaced persons camps in northeast Syria is… Read more »
And as we know, percentage of the votes received doesn’t translate directly into number of seats won.
It is likely Corbyn will garner votes from those wouldn’t vote Reform or Tory anyway.
The Islamic demographic postal vote will be interesting…
The Imam will get a lot of extra votes.
Watch out for plans to allow voting on-line.
The reality will dawn on the youngsters that with voting comes responsibility and that means these nice young boys and girls will probably become a target for military conscription.
Given that NATO is rearming and the demographics of Europe this could become a distinct possibility, in fact I did read somewhere that it is the real reason for lowering the voting age. Not sure that is correct but it is a danger point given the fact that governments in Europe are falling apart. We will see.
Hmm. I hope you’re right but I have my doubts. I think there are far too many adults who have not achieved that revelation; so why expect that of children?
The last election is not a good base on which to make predictions. Labour got in with only a quarter of the nominated electorate voting for them. The aim of many people was basically to punish the Conservatives. Extrapolating the new youth vote from those in their 20s I think will prove unreliable too as the sources of influence and information have changed considerably in 10 years. There were many schools in which Reform won their “election” when they were given the chance to vote in their classrooms.
No. One FIFTH voted for them.
Yes, I think that is correct: a third of a 60% turnout. Thanks.
The consent manufacturing machine that is our electoral democracy is creaking and needs some new spare parts to keep it working.
Your last para reminds me of what happened when the SDP was formed in the early 1980s. The FPTP system will most likely result the Right benefitting from the “Corbyn party”. You never know, it might merge with the Liberals (again)!
If the indigenous birth rate continues to fall then in twenty years there won’t be any 16 or 17 year olds, but there will be many 86 or 87 year olds, barring another cull.
There’ll be plenty of them in 2029 though! Will we have to go a full decade until the it dawns on the electorate what they’re actually voting for? (socialism)
Remember, this is a party that can’t even come up with its own name and manifesto, and as with all new parties, frames itself as a reactionary movement. Of course young people will sign up, because the youth loves novelty and radical new ideas.
But right now all they are is a website with a few whingy paragraphs. Perhaps it is for that reason that youths are signing up to their mailing list… there’s not much to read. An oversimplified shiny utopia. When reality kicks in maybe they’ll think twice about actually joining.
At the party’s inaugural conference, so the website claims, “you will get to decide the party’s direction, model of leadership and policies…. OK. So what happens if the attendees vote to not recognise a Palestinian state, scrap Net Zero and wealth taxes and ban migrant hotels? Would Corbyn go along with that? A party needs to begin with a firm set of principles, manifesto pledges and, you know, maybe a NAME. Otherwise it’s going nowhere.
Exactly – leadership. Not exactly Corbyns strength is it… main hope is it splits the labour vote, however given the trouble they seem to be having in working out a name, I’ll not bet any cash on them making an impact quite yet
“Votes for 16 and 17 Year-Olds Will Be a Disaster for the Right.” Such confidence. Looks like clickbait to me. Won’t be an issue if the population is sufficiently angry and turnout booms.
Todays 12-13 year olds will be 16-17 in 4 years time. Their only political experience will have been 5 years of a terrible labour government, and the constant harassment from …
A lot of them will be like the girl in the Union Jack dress. From what I’ve heard recently they are becoming more right wing.
By the way the current Conservative Party is far left. Everything Starmer has done was started by them, including Chagos.
“The question, then, is how are 16–17 year-olds going to vote? “ Wrong question. The question is how are their fathers who fill out their postal ballot forms going to vote? I think we know… and in which constituencies. But. The polls seem not to reflect the reality. The 16 and 17 year olds who will vote in three years time are currently 13 and 14 with no interest in politics and unlikely to be any more interested in three years time. During the US election the Trump campaign, thanks to Baron, became very adept at communicating with younger people via social media, and discovered there was a significant shift to the political Right by the under 25 age group – and Trump’s support among this group went up. Reform UK also is adept at communicating with younger people via social media, it reports it picked up widespread support during GE, and similarly noted a shift rightward by young people. Now funny thing – call me a conspiracy theorist – but Labour which is not very good at doing social media, hot on the heels of reducing the voting age has pushed through their on-line censorship legislation making it more difficult… Read more »
This is stating the bleeding obvious, what was it Churchill said? If you aren’t a socialist at 20 you have no heart. If you aren’t a conservative at 40 you have no brain. So of course 16 to 18 year olds are mainly going to vote for Labour. It’s the natural order of things.
They aren’t as naive or idealistic as they used to be when I was that age. I think you may be pleasantly surprised at how that age group will vote – and Labour are in for a shock
It’s ok. They probably wont bother to turn up. 😂
When I was involved with Reform, I met quite a number of 16-18 year olds. Giving this age group the vote may not work out quite as well for them as Labour might think. I imagine that the more naive and idealistic lefties will vote either Green or Jezzbollah. Anything that splits the left vote is to be welcomed IMHO
The poll you quoted puts Reform at 18% and the Corbyn party at 27% among young people. That’s only a differential of 9%, among voters who are, as you say, likely to form only 3% of the votes cast. That means they will change the voting outcome by 9% of 3%, which is less than 0.3%. It will not make a material difference. (The Conservatives are, as expected, basically dead among this age group – only 5%, with the Lib Dems and Greens both on more than double that figure.)
It is also worth saying that the actual voting after a campaign may not reflect these results.
The sooner the Conservatives fade away and let the Right unite around Reform, the better.
Too young to buy booze, fags or lottery tickets but old enough to help decide who are dear leaders are to be. Absolute flocking madness.