Will lowering the voting age change Britain’s political landscape?

Politics is pretty noisy at the moment, but a quiet, if minor, revolution has just begun. After first announcing it last July, the government has now introduced a bill that will give 16- and 17-year-olds the vote in a UK general election. This represents the biggest change to the franchise since 1969, when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.

The bill will also widen the range of ID that can be presented at polling stations, alongside tightening up the rules on foreign interference and large donations.

No. The Representation of the People Bill 2026 is only now starting its parliamentary journey, and even if passed by May, it will take time to recruit the new voters and build the new electoral register.

In the long run, it could disproportionately benefit any given political party, because different cohorts of voters change their preferences over time, albeit slowly.

When votes for women were introduced in 1918 (for the over-30s) and extended in 1929 (to all women aged 21 and over), the Conservatives gained a distinct advantage, one that sustained over many decades until the 21st century, when it reversed. Similarly, the pensioner vote used to be strongly Labour – not so nowadays, while class has far less of a bearing on party loyalties than it had in the past.

Based on polling of the next cohort up, the short answer is that the Green Party would be the largest beneficiary by far of this extension of the franchise, followed by the Liberal Democrats, and Labour to a lesser extent.

Young men show some signs of being more disposed to vote Reform than their female counterparts, but Nigel Farage doesn’t seem to hold an immediate attraction for this group.

As things stand, the Conservatives would also badly underperform with young males – perhaps because, having been born in 2009 and 2010, this cohort have lived almost their entire lives under Tory-led governments. But among the over-65s, the Tories and Reform are dominant – a demographic voting gap that may reflect intergenerational differences in outlook and circumstances. It is certainly striking.

Younger voters do tend to be more concerned about the environment and mental health, but are also worried about the issues generally cited by older groups, such as the cost of living.

It would seem logical that education and training opportunities would figure in their preferences, as would policies to support their maintenance in sixth-form colleges (introduced by New Labour in 1999, but abolished by the coalition government in 2011).

Any party that pledged to provide more money for apprenticeships, and to scrap tuition fees, would surely enjoy a surge of youthful enthusiasm – and this may also account for the popularity of the Greens.

No. Many countries, such as Brazil and Austria, have maintained civilised standards despite allowing the kids to vote, and 16- and 17-year-olds can already vote for their governments in Scotland and Wales.

Unlikely. Even allowing for their heavy Green bias, there aren’t that many 16- to 17-year-olds who’ll be eligible to vote, plus their turnout tends to be lower. (According to an ITN/Merlin poll last year, about half of 16- to 18-year-olds don’t even want the vote.) There are some 1.3 million new teenagers who’d qualify under citizenship rules, out of a total electorate of around 47 million.

Some “young” constituencies in urban areas might tend to add to the support for the Greens, the Gaza independents and Labour, but not enough to make a decisive difference in a general election. Thinking more widely, their arrival as even a small force in elections would reinforce the existing pro-European demographic trend, and thus make winning a referendum on rejoining the European Union and reversing Brexit much easier.