News and Blog

  It has been common practice for some time – and perhaps now more than ever – for journalists to emphasise the political differences between young and old in areas such as voting preferences or political agendas, and to frame those differences in terms of generational ‘conflict’ or ‘war’. With the exception of electoral turnout,…

  As the official referendum campaign gets underway, polling continues to highlight the vital role Millennials will play in deciding the outcome. They are becoming (albeit slightly) even more supportive of EU membership, even though overall levels of support have remained relatively stable, and young people who support EU membership are – unlike their elder counterparts – more…

Depending on your perspective, the campaigns for a remain/withdrawal vote in the EU referendum have had between six weeks (since David Cameron announced the date of the referendum on 20th February) or more than two years (since David Cameron announced that the plan to hold a referendum would be in the Conservative Party manifesto for the…

Coverage in the Financial Times on Dr Stuart Fox and Dr Sioned Pearce’s research on young people and the EU referendum

  Since David Cameron announced the date of the EU referendum, the gulf in support for EU membership between young and old – not to mention the gulf in the likelihood of voting – has featured heavily in media coverage and opinion polling about the referendum campaign. An explanation for that gulf in support, however,…

  In last week’s blog we showed how important Millennials are to the Remain campaign: they make up one in three ‘Remainers’, and also make up the largest chunk of ‘Committed Remainers’ who will most likely vote to stay in the EU on polling day. Once we take into account the fact that most voters – and…

  A recurrent theme any study or discussion of how young people will participate in the EU referendum is (and will most likely remain) their reluctance to do so. According to our latest data, around 70% of Millennials are likely to vote, while one in ten are certain not to. This compares with 85% of the…

Leading-up to Britain’s EU membership referendum on the 23rd of June, WISERD is running a study of the attitudes, preferences and engagement throughout the referendum campaign of today’s young people. The study ‘Should we stay or should we go: Young People and the EU Referendum‘ will include several surveys of young people throughout the UK asking…

On 19th January both the Labour Party’s internal report into the reason for its defeat in the 2015 general election, as well as the British Polling Council’s interim report looking at why the opinion polls had so spectacularly failed to predict the result, were published. A common theme in both documents was the over-dependence of both…

In November, the House of Lords voted in favour of allowing 16 and 17 year olds to vote in Britain’s EU referendum, expected to be held sometime in the next two years, and on 14th of December, following a rejection of the proposal by the House of Commons, the issue was put before the House of…