Votes for 16-18 Year Olds

The Misunderstood Effects

From the BBC:

Some pollsters say that while there's no reason to think 16 and 17-year-olds would break away from the pattern of young people leaning to the left, there isn't enough polling of this age group to say with confidence how they would vote.

Anthony Wells, head of European political and social research at YouGov, also points out we don't yet know if voting tendencies could change if Labour are an unpopular incumbent at the next election - which is likely to be four years away.

The current observation of what happens with 16 and 17 year olds getting the vote is based on 16 and 17 year olds being spectators to politics. If you ask them which party they like they will look at what is on offer and choose the best of what is being offered.

But what is being offered is policies that please people 18+ because that’s who votes. No-one cares that much about sucking up to 16 and 17 year olds, because they don’t vote. Once 16-17 year olds can vote, they will be lobbied based on what they want, which may not be what 18+ year olds want.

So as of now, they might like more eco stuff. Kids seem to like that. But what if 16-17 year olds have things they care about more. Maybe they’d like to be able to buy booze, leave school at 16 or get child fares on trains until the age of 18.

We have a historic precedent for this, which prohibition. As women in the USA started to get the vote (women’s votes were a state-by-state matter until the 19th Amendment), they started supporting bans on alcohol. This wasn’t a political issue at all for the men. Men mostly didn’t care. They were probably thinking in terms of regulations around leather chaps and moustache wax. But women didn’t want their men spending all the family money on booze and coming home drunk. Once you had them as active voters, you had campaigners supporting their causes and then you had politicians supporting those causes to get their votes. It’s even noted that in some states, there was a delay to women getting the vote, because men knew that it would mean them not being able to drink.

Now, 16-18 year olds are a much smaller constituency than women, but it’s going to at least add weight to existing campaigns. My guess, we’ll see a bigger push for legalisation of cannabis. Maybe a reduction in VAT on car insurance which is a huge cost for under 25s. Labour might get voters but they won’t just be able to be Labour as they are now.