NCRM Director Patrick Sturgis has written a blog post for the London School of Economics and Political Science on the concept of the 2017 general election experiencing a 'youthquake'.
The term 'youthquake' refers to the surge of support that Labour received from the youth vote in the election. The British Election Study team have queried whether more young people did turn out to vote in 2017, but working with Will Jenings (Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Southampton), Patrick has used the latest data from the Understanding Society survey to argue there was in fact a significant increase in turnout for the under 30's.
Patrick and Will found that there was an eight percentage point increase in turnout from voters aged 18-24, and a 13 percentage point increase in turnout for 25-29 year olds, supporting the theory that 2017 witnessed something of a 'youthquake' after all.
Understanding Society is a longitudinal household panel survey which uses a large sample size (around 40,000 respondents at Wave 8) to interview a random sample of the UK population on a range of different topics, including voting and party support.