For those of you interested in voter intention polls, the latest results from YouGov for the Sunday Times are as follows: Con: 33%; Lab: 39; UKIP: 12%; Lib Dem: 10%. Since this website launched last month, we have been tweeting the daily polling results on most evenings. These results have barely moved during that time.
But beneath those headline figures lies a whole host of more detailed, and rather more interesting results: voting intention by region (we’re doing best in the South excluding London at 15%; worst in Scotland at 2%); voting intention by 2010 vote (84% of Labour voters in 2010 intend to vote Labour again, versus just 39% of Liberal Democrat supports who would still vote Lib Dem – good news for those of you campaigning in Liberal seats).
And by age. In the poll taken over 14th & 15th November (ie last Thursday and Friday), only 4% of those in the 18-24% age bracket were thinking of voting UKIP, rising steadily to 15% of those aged 60+.
Voting intention / age |
18-24 |
25-39 |
40-59 |
60+ |
Conservative |
33 |
24 |
32 |
40 |
Labour |
32 |
45 |
44 |
31 |
Liberal Democrat |
23 |
13 |
6 |
9 |
UKIP |
4 |
10 |
13 |
15 |
Would not vote |
20 |
10 |
6 |
3 |
Don’t know |
16 |
15 |
13 |
17 |
It is clear from these figures that if we want to advance in the polls and to secure wins at the ballot box, we must reach out to younger voters. And whilst it is also true that the largest percentage of non-voters are in that age bracket, it’s also true that four out of five 18-24 year olds intend to cast a vote.
Our headline policy, EU immigration, directly affects young voters. How many times have our leaders spoken on television, in newspaper interviews and during speeches, about the 1,000,000 British youngsters who are out of work thanks to an influx of unskilled immigration from across the Union? How many times has that mention of young people been in the abstract – talking about young people rather that to them?
Over the summer I had some young family friends – a brother and sister aged 18 and 21 – come to stay for the weekend. They asked me why my Facebook page was always covered in political stuff, and why I’d chosen to join UKIP. I told them that I liked what Nigel Farage had to say, and that I trusted him more than Cameron. They asked who Nigel Farage was.
I have been banging a drum for the past few years on the need to move politics into the world of modern communications technology. This is particularly important when trying to engage with young people, to whom social media is an integral part of every day life. Politics, for the average 21 year old, conjures up images of the 10 o’clock news, Boris Johnson making silly speeches, and incomprehensible shouting in the House of Commons. It’s distant, it’s meaningless, it has no direct relevance to their lives. My young friends told me that they would not be voting as they didn’t know enough about it.
Yet there is no reason that we shouldn’t be connecting with a younger audience. As the Evening Standard put it in an article about UKIP’s appeal to young voters:
“Many people who are fed up with mainstream politics have been attracted to UKIP precisely because it is not a conventional party. They like Farage’s spontaneity, and the almost anarchic pleasure he takes in voicing opinions that he knows will upset the political establishment. For its youth wing, many of whom describe themselves as libertarians, this sense of a maverick determined to set the cat among the pigeons also appeals.”
In June of this year, The Economist looked at polling and discovered that Generation Y (people born in the 1980s and 90s) is more classically liberal than any previous generation still with us:
“… those aged 18 to 24 are also more likely than older people to consider social problems the responsibility of individuals rather than government. They are deficit hawks. They care about the environment, but are also keen on commerce: more supportive of the privatisation of utilities, more likely to reject government attempts to ban branding on cigarette packets and more likely to agree that Tesco, Britain’s supermarket giant, “has only become so large by offering customers what they want”.”
That magazine concluded that today’s economic climate, in which young people have to be far more competitive than previous generations to succeed, had inculcated an understanding of, and respect for market-based solutions. Failure on the part of successive governments to make good their promises of high quality state institutions had also played a part. Most young people don’t expect to be receiving a state pension by the time they reach retirement.
And yet, the Westminster parties haven’t internalised this shift yet. Their solutions and offerings still revolve around government spending, subsidy and interventionist measures. Only UKIP proclaims itself as libertarian and has the policies to back up the claim.
We in UKIP can and should be speaking directly to young people about the problems they face: unemployment in the face of mass immigration, yes, but also rising housing costs, lack of financial stability, concerns over the coming pensions crisis, the fact that this generation may well be the first not to enjoy a better quality of life than their parents. As the only party not to have played a part in creating the situation, we are uniquely placed to offer a real alternative to young people worried about what the future might hold.
And now I too find myself talking about young people in the abstract, rather than to them!
This week, UKIP Daily is interested in hearing the voices of our younger members. We asked: how can UKIP attract more voters in the 18-24 year old age bracket? What sort of policies do we need to put in place? How would you like to interact with us? What challenges and opportunities are to be found within the realms of our younger members?
Young people of UKIP: we need you to be our eyes and ears amongst your peer group. We need your energy when it comes to mass leafleting campaigns, your boundless enthusiasm on polling day, your ideas on how to move beyond conventional campaigning into the modern era. In return, we offer meaningful solutions to the problems you face. Together, we can work towards a brighter future.
“It is clear from these figures that if we want to advance in the polls and to secure wins at the ballot box, we must reach out to younger voters. ” Ho hum – not so sure.
We should certainly seek to attract support from all demographic areas and all social groups because we are a national party. But resources are inevitably limited so we ought to spend time and money on potential supporters where we will get the maximum pay-back.
There are some marginal issues: we should not ignore any demographic because that might seem like we are not interested, but it is pay-back we need and not an arbitrary clamour for “roof” for its own sake. Apart from anything else, they tend to vote with less propensity than older voters.
If current levels of immigration are maintained, I expect to see race riots in the near future (18-24 year olds):
Agree: 47%
Disagree: 29%
http://web.archive.org/web/20150128231133/http://comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Radio_1_Newsbeat_Discrimination_Poll_September_2013.pdf
Even though the issue of immigration is less of a concern than the average person on the street for 18-24 year olds it is still a concern. In Syke’s YouGov Poll in Yorkshire 51% say immigration would influence their decision in selecting their MEP, among 18-24 year olds it is 36%. Lower, but this age group have no party loyalty so potentially we can tap into this vote in greater numbers, plus when more and more young people start voting for UKIP they will influence other young people in voting for them through communication and social networking. But the issue for UKIP is not the fact there are not enough young people who are concerned about immigration it is about how we can attract them to the party. These people are not University students, these are working class kids from the estates, the ones who find it difficult getting a job because they lack qualifications and compete with newly arrived immigrants, they are people with rougher edges, urbanites. they usually don’t vote, UKIP needs to appeal to them, it can be done + once they start voting for UKIP they will continue in later life.
I would agree with the other commentators: push the libertarian angle. If you are unsure about themes or unsure about what being on the Libertarian Right actually means I recommend the Libertarian Alliance blog as a good place to start . You could do a lot worse than spend a few hours watching the YouTube speeches and reading some of the articles of Sean Gabb.
UKIP need to make it clear that they’re a libertarian party. Too many people, especially youngsters seem to think UKIP are just angry tories that hate immigrants. All this talk about a pact with the tories doesn’t help either.
Perhaps a grafic history lesson of what Britain was like during the 1960’s and 70’s socialism, under headline you wont remember what it was like, in the 80’s with imports skyrocketing under the EU and british industry being bought out by foreign companies, in the 90’s with back stabbing tories destroying their party, they being the power mongers behind the government now, to the naughties where we were bare face lied to and taken to war, house prices shot through the roof making it impossible for youth of today to buy to the eary 10’s where Labour knowing they were going to lose the election did everything it could to destroy the economy and sell us out even faster to the EU, with a final message of “being the future of your country where do you want it to go, what opportunities do you want for the future, and what opportunities do you want to leave for future generations?” clever than I can come up with better, and the really clever wil survey the guts out of any idea first ,getting the medium results and the commonest emotional level.
Younger voters are generally not interested in taxes etc. Bores them silly. Many have grown up in the 97-present open door immigration, so whilst that topic is an issue, many have not known any different.
However, name a youngster who isn’t email/twitter/f.book/mobile phone orientated?
Then tell me how many would like their information shared and/or spied on?
Hence, really pushing libertarian issues like gov’t not snooping on personal data is a massive avenue to peruse. When I’ve pointed out UKIP’s libertarian non-snooping ideas, it really raises the ears up.
As commented, tell a young voter about flat tax and the EU commission and you’ll probably not be talking for long. Talk about social media and mobile phones, and you’ll be surprised.
I agree that the surveillance state is a hugely important issue but Nigel has been quiet on the subject.
I discussed this with a couple of young people that I know and it was clear that they associated UKIP with the issue of immigration and also that they considered the discussion of the immigration issue to be “racist”.
It seems that the biggest divide between my generation and the young is that they consider “racism” to be the mother of all evils. I’m not suggesting that UKIP is a “racist” organisation of course, but if young people do feel this way then it seems that this may be our biggest hurdle.
61% of 18-24 year olds say It is possible to criticise the amount of immigration or individual immigrants without being labelled racist, with UKIP voters this is only 46%. http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/l3pn0qdb4x/YG-Archive-131030-UKIP.pdf