Abstract
In the aftermath of the 2017 UK General Election, some claimed that Labour performed unexpectedly well because of a surge in youth turnout. Polling estimates for the size of this ‘youthquake’ ranged from 12 to 21 points amongst 18–24 year olds. Using conventional and Bayesian statistical methods, we analyse British Election Study and British Social Attitudes random probability surveys and find no evidence of a shift in the relationship between age and turnout of this scale. Using the pooled BES and BSA reported turnout data with an informative prior that there was a modest increase in 18–24 turnout (N{6, 3}), our 95% credible interval for that change is between 0.9 and 8.8 points. Even with a strong youthquake prior (N{15.5, 3.5}), our data suggest that there is only a 4% probability that the change in turnout amongst 18–24 years olds was 12 points or higher.
Highlights
Assessing the case for youthquakeIt is important to emphasise that we are examining the question of turnout
In the aftermath of the 2017 UK General Election, some claimed that Labour performed unexpectedly well because of a surge in youth turnout
If we examine whether a respondent who appeared in wave one of Understanding Society ap pears in the 2015 turnout data, we see that a respondent who said they were very interested in politics in wave 1 is 12 percentage points more likely to appear in the 2015 data than a respondent who said they were not at all interested in politics
Summary
It is important to emphasise that we are examining the question of turnout . Youthquake may be a powerful rhetorical device, but as a social scientific concept, it is slippery. Youthquake described the ’shock [2017 general election] result founded on an un expected surge in youth turnout’ (Sloam and Ehsan 2017, 5). Later formulations included changes in party support amongst young people (Whiteley and Clarke, 2017), and some proponents argued that a youthquake encompassed different campaigning styles, the role of social media, the Labour party’s policy proposals, and the subsequent reaction of the Conservatives to the election result (Ehsan et al, 2017). We deal with ‘youthquake’ as it was originally formulated, and examine the question of whether there was a substantial rise in turnout amongst young people It is impossible to determine whether a youthquake so flexibly defined has taken place. We deal with ‘youthquake’ as it was originally formulated, and examine the question of whether there was a substantial rise in turnout amongst young people
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