News and Blog

  There is a well-established conventional wisdom that today’s young people are a politically alienated generation, meaning that they are seen as estranged or withdrawn from politics. Whether it is their low turnout in elections or their support for protest and social movements, the young are held up as a generation put off politics by…

The idea that Brexit has engaged the young to such an extent that they voted in high numbers in the recent general election has been a prominent feature of the public autopsy of the result.[1] There is little question that the young voted in greater numbers than in the last half dozen elections, and that this had…

Public trust in the political establishment is an integral part of voter choice in any election or referendum, but more crucially it upholds the democratic process. Without some degree of trust in politicians, political parties, experts and the media, state-societal relations would hit a gridlock. Without trust, people would be less likely to vote and…

In light of the 2017 General Election, in which the youth vote became one of the defining features, Dr Stuart Fox updates us on the latest findings from the Young People and Brexit project. Using new data, he discusses whether there really was a ‘youth surge’ in votes and whether this election really was the ‘revenge of…

Dr Sioned Pearce and Dr Stuart Fox write about the 2017 general election results, in an article published by The Conversation. It can be found by following this link.

It is difficult to think of an election in which the votes of young people – age 18 to 25 – have caused more of a stir. Of course, the youth vote was expected to be important in the EU referendum, the Scottish independence referendum and just about every general election since the voting age was lowered…

WISERD researchers presented our work on young people, education and politics, as part of this year’s exciting line-up at the 30th anniversary Hay Festival. ‘Mind the gap’ formed part of the Cardiff Series, presented by Dr Dan Evans, Dr Esther Muddiman, Dr Stuart Fox and Dr Sioned Pearce, which considered the striking divisions revealed between…

Dr Stuart Fox and Cardiff postgraduate student Jake Smith were quoted in an article about young people and non-voting. A link to the article can be found here.

Theresa May’s shock announcement of a general election to be held on June 8th (assuming Parliament approves) means that in just six weeks the country will once again be going to the polls to fight over the UK’s membership of the European Union. Other issues will no doubt feature in the election campaign – the…

In recent blogs, we have explored the impact of Brexit, and the stances taken by the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties towards the triggering of Article 50, on the political support of young voters. Those blogs showed that while there have been some small changes, for the most part Brexit has had little impact: younger voters still overwhelmingly…