Young voters helped upend the last UK election: With Brexit, jobs, housing on the line, will they do it again in 2019?

In the 2017 UK Election, a dominant performance among young people helped Labour win enough seats to unexpectedly deprive the governing Conservative Party of its parliamentary majority Southampton: As students from the University of Southampton zigzagged across campus on a recent cold afternoon, youthful activists with Britain’s main Opposition Labour Party intercepted them with cups of tea and a leaflet with detailed instructions on how to register to vote in December’s election. In the 2017 General Election, a dominant performance among young people helped Labour win enough seats to unexpectedly deprive the governing Conservative Party of its parliamentary majority. “They are promising the full scrapping of tuition fees, free bus travel for all under-25s, raise the minimum wage to £10 and mass invest into youth services to reverse and go beyond the one billion cuts in youth services by the Tories.” While young voters tend to favour the Labour Party, the youth vote shows the same tendency toward fragmentation as the wider British Left. “And then we have the Lib Dems who say they will cancel Brexit, but they aren’t going to get a majority, so people are in a pickle and are just choosing to vote tactically instead of idealistically.” Even though Corbyn has lost popularity since the last election, following accusations of anti-Semitism and his refusal to take a personal stance on Brexit, youth support for his party appears to be gathering momentum once again.