So was it Corbyn’s appeal to younger voters what swung last year’s general election in his favour? Not according to the British Election Study (BES) which today publishes a paper questioning the received wisdom that Labour’s unexpectedly strong showing was down to a surge of support from younger voters who managed to cast off their apathy for the first time. Indeed, claims the team, the Oxford English Dictionary may have been a bit premature in declaring ‘Youthquake’ as its word of the year.
The idea that Corbyn managed to inspire a generation of normally-apathetic youngsters was cast very early in the post-election analysis when it was noticed that some seats snatched by Labour had seen substantial increases in turnout. Canterbury, for example, which dramatically elected a Labour MP for the first time ever, saw turnout increase by nearly seven percentage points.
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