Could the late surge in young people applying to vote in the referendum secure the vote for remain? On Tuesday the volume of applications crashed the website for registering to vote, prompting the government to extend the deadline by another 48 hours.
There were a record 525,000 applications on Tuesday including more than 200,000 from people under the age of 35 rushing to beat the initial deadline.
After the deadline was extended there were another 242,000 applications on Wednesday, including 146,000 from under 35s. There are likely to be at least as many on Thursday.
It is thought that the remain campaign stands most to gain from late registrations as most of those applying are younger voters. Aron Banks, the funder of the unofficial Brexit campaign Leave.EU, was said to be so incensed he planned to sue the government.
But will the number applying make any difference, especially as many of those doing so could already be on the register?
We asked five polling groups to assess the likely impact on the referendum result. The responses were mixed, ranging from one arguing that the polls were so tight every vote could count, to another arguing that it was extremely unlikely to make a difference.
John Curtice, senior research fellow and professor at NatCen Social Research
We don’t actually know how many of these people who are trying to apply late are already on the register. We do know from the experience of the 2015 election that quite a few people then were already on the register and didn’t realise.
One local authority after the general election told me they were not sure how big their electorate was because of the number of double entries on their register.
The publicity has been “to vote in the referendum you register” – nobody has mentioned the fact that there is an electoral register and most people are already on it.
In England and Wales, on average, there were 800 names added to the register in the average constituency between the 1 December 2014 and late April 2015. So it was between 400,000 and half a million people – considerably less than the number of applications made.
Everything will be crucial if it’s close. Gibraltar [voters] could swing it. All the politicians are saying is “please register” and I’m sure returning officers are tearing their hair out. Until we know how many names have been added to the register we won’t know how effective this operation is.
Bobby Duffy, managing director of social research at Ipsos Mori
It is great that so many young people have taken the opportunity to register. (There will be plenty of people applying who are already on the register.) But there’s a big difference in how many [registered] people actually turn out. We did some work in the general election showing that only 51% of under 35s turned out compared to 85% of those aged 65 and over. That’s a massive deficit.
Under 35s make up 29% of population, but only 22% of the people who vote. Whereas for the over 65s it’s the other way round. If you equalised the turnout levels, it is worth a couple of percentage points. So in a tight race, if you can get all of the young people to turn out at the same level as the over 65s, then it could be significant in tipping the balance. In a very tight race, those percentage points of two could make the difference.
The gradient between old and young in terms of views about the EU has been massive. In one of our May polls we had 68% of young people saying they’d vote to stay in and 36% of 65 pluses saying they would vote to stay in. So it is almost twice the level of support for remain among young people.
It definitely makes more sense on the remain side to have young people registered. And looking at the profile of who is applying to register [now], there are massively more young people than older people.
The polls are very tight. This is knife-edge type vote, so every single vote could count.
Anthony Wells, director of YouGov’s political and social opinion polling
At the last election the number on the register didn’t change nearly as much as the number who made applications. Either people made the application and didn’t go through with it, or lots made the application and found they were already on [the register]. I suspect it was the latter, because lots of people have registered to be on the safe side.
If it’s 600,000 people [registering] over this last couple of days, and even if 90% of those people are already on the register, that’s still leaves 60,000 extra people who will presumably vote who otherwise couldn’t have. It would need to be very close for that to make a difference. But if things are close enough anything can make a difference.
Realistically, polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, so how could around 100,000 people make a difference, when 1% of electorate is 400,000 people?
Clearly if the race comes down to a handful of votes, then one can point to countless number of things that could have made a difference. What if Nigel Farage had worn a different colour tie?Politically it’s extremely unlikely to make a difference.
Adam Drummond, research manager at Opinium Research
There’s certainly a chance that a late surge of registrations by younger people will be beneficial for [the remain campaign]. But there are a few reasons to think it won’t be that much of a boost. A lot of those people will already be registered but have registered again [to be uncertain, thinking] “there’s no harm in doing so again just to be certain”.
There’s also no guarantee those newly registered people will vote. If you’ve left if until the last minute to register then you might similarly leave it late to vote and end up missing the polls.
On the other hand, if you’ve had to make an extra effort to register then maybe you’re more likely to … pay attention to the debate and end up voting.
I suspect those effects will cancel each other out, though. If turnout is around 55% then that’s 25 million voters which means 1% is 250,000 votes. If things stay as close as polls indicate … it could end up being decided by things that ordinarily wouldn’t have much of an effect.
Tom Mludzinski, director of political polling at ComRes
If people are registering fairly late then the number of those who then go on to vote will be fairly low I’d imagine. If they haven’t been interested or engaged previously they’ve got caught up in this public campaign on Facebook or Twitter or wherever and signed up. That’s one big step, but the other hurdle is actually turning up on the day and voting.
Turnout as ever is crucial among the younger groups, who are less likely to vote anyway. Most people registering late are younger voters, and we do know that younger people are significantly more likely to vote remain. We found that 71% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they will vote remain, so it is pretty significant, in remain’s favour.
The vote is unlikely to be so tight it is swung by a few thousand people, but every vote helps. If it means that people are voting now who would not have been able to otherwise, then that of course is going to help the side they vote for, and in pretty big numbers young people vote for remain over leave.
