In a guest post, Craig Berrydraws attention to the increasing
weakness of young people’s voters compared to older people’s
votes – both because of the ageing population, and because young
people in Britain are much, much less likely to vote. Young
people are more affected by the outcomes of the democratic
process than other cohorts: their youth means that by and large
they will live with the consequences of political decisions for
longer. Furthermore, young people are at a crucial life-stage
where the impact of political decisions will have a decisive and
cumulative effect on their socio-economic circumstances across
their lifecourses. The growing power of ‘the grey vote’ appears
to have had real consequences for the ability of young people to
make themselves heard within the democratic process, but more
worryingly, may begin to undermine the legitimacy of democracy
itself. How old are the voters Simply, cohort size matters.
Analysis of the British Election Survey by Andy Furlong and Fred
Cartmel shows that g