How are young voter registration and voter authority applications looking?

I’ve heard this attributed to apathy, or even to selfishness. But the reasons are generally process-based, and for 2024 we’ve added a whole new barrier.

[Full screen]

First up, to vote in a constituency you need to be registered in that constituency. When you are young, your mum or another responsible adult would generally have put you on the household form from the age of 16 – so when  your 18th birthday rolls around you would become registered to vote automatically. Unless you’ve been deliberately removed from your household form, you’d still be on there for every election. But students and young people generally are quite likely to have a semi-permanent address in another constituency: and here registration can be a little more patchy.

I say “semi-permanent” because young people do move around a lot – from halls, to a succession of shared houses and short-term lets that these days often extends well into your 30s. If you move house every year, it becomes more likely that you forget to register. Happily all the noise about the July election may have prompted people in these situations to check if they are registered via an online form.

The government publishes data on this – and above, I’ve plotted cumulative registration by age group since the day before the election was called. The black line shows the deadline for registration: 18 July. By the day after, some 833,000 under 25s, and just over a million aged between 25 and 34, registered to vote or updated their details. These two groups represent around half of total registrations.

For the first time you will need to show photo ID to vote in the 2024 general election. There has been a great deal of concern about the lack of options available for young people – though many (but not all) will have a driving license (even a provisional one), a Blue Badge, or a passport, some will not. Otherwise (unless you wanted to shell out for one of those PASS “proof of age” cards) the best option was the government’s own free “Voter Authority Certificate” scheme.

The deadline for applying in order to get one for the general election was 26 June, but by that time just 4,700 under 25s and 7,300 25-34s did so. The scheme saw nearly 60,000 applications in total this time, the majority of which appear to have gone to the 55-64 age group (who could also have used a range of old age travel passes, an option not open to young people even where the passes are issued by the same transport companies).

Quite what this latter stat means for the student and young graduate vote is unclear – but it is very much an effect to bear in mind as you start seeing results from student seats roll in on the morning of 5 July.