Public opinion, political partisanship and the Votes-at-16 debate in the United Kingdom
| Author | Jonathan Tonge,Thomas Loughran,Andrew Mycock |
| DOI | 10.1177/13691481211021216 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211021216
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2022, Vol. 24(2) 297 –323
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211021216
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Public opinion, political
partisanship and the Votes-
at-16 debate in the United
Kingdom
Thomas Loughran1, Andrew Mycock2
and Jonathan Tonge1
Abstract
The debate in the United Kingdom over whether the voting age should be lowered to 16 has
largely involved political elites demanding change. Public opinion, insofar as it has been tested
at UK-wide level, has tended to oppose lowering the voting age for Westminster elections, but
change has proceeded for non-Westminster elections in Scotland and Wales. Drawing upon
extensive research undertaken as part of a 2-year Leverhulme Trust project on the voting age
debate, this article tests public opinion via quantitative surveys on whether the voting age should
be lowered for UK-wide elections not only among the existing electorate but also among 16- to
17-year-olds. It suggests three things: (1) there has been a shift among adults towards support
for change, but not an outright majority in favour; (2) the insulation of public opinion from the
debate is likely to diminish as only a change in attitudes appears capable of eliciting change at UK
level; and (3) the divisions on the issue among the public map onto the importance of age as a
variable in party choice, with younger Labour supporters most in favour of Votes-at-16 and older
Conservatives most opposed. This political partisanship was absent when the United Kingdom
became the first country in the world to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 half-a-century ago
but is likely to dominate the Votes-at-16 debate for years to come.
Keywords
partisanship, party choice, public opinion, representation, voting age, youth citizenship, youth
democracy
Introduction
The proposition that the voting age should be lowered to 16 for some or all elections
across the United Kingdom has become an increasingly salient political issue. Advocates
and opponents of Votes-at-16 have typically framed arguments for or against the policy in
1Department of Politics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
2Department of Politics, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK
Corresponding author:
Jonathan Tonge, Department of Politics, University of Liverpool, 8–14 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69
7WZ, UK.
Email: j.tonge@liverpool.ac.uk
1021216BPI0010.1177/13691481211021216The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsLoughran et al.
research-article2021
Original Article
298 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24(2)
terms of normative democratic principles (Cowley and Denver, 2004; Folkes, 2004) or
arguments related to young people’s perceived levels of maturity on a number of relevant
(and sometimes irrelevant) dimensions (Champion, 2014; Gibson and Hamilton, 2013;
Healy and Malhotra, 2013; Harper 2014). The role of public opinion is, however, periph-
eral in such debates, possibly because the general public has appeared substantially
opposed, but largely apathetic, towards the issue (Birch et al., 2014; Chan and Clayton,
2006). This has led to contentions that the bespoke and partial lowering of the voting age
across the United Kingdom has – thus far – been largely driven by political elites in a
‘top-down’ manner, with scant acknowledgement of, or reference to, the views of the
general public (Loughran et al., 2019; Mycock et al., 2020).
The primary aim and focus of this article is to explain the underlying drivers of public
attitudes towards the voting age. In doing so, it addresses the absence of detailed aca-
demic consideration of the development of public opinion on voting age reform, includ-
ing – for the first time – an exploration of the underlying attitudes driving support among
16- to 17-year-olds. The article first presents a comprehensive overview of the (some-
what intermittent) public opinion polling on the voting age over the last two decades to
identify trends in public opinion on the issue. We seek to explore whether public support
for lowering the voting age has changed in parallel with the growing policy traction it
has achieved among a majority of political parties in the United Kingdom (with the sig-
nificant exceptions of the Conservative and Democratic Unionist parties) and within the
devolved governments in Scotland and Wales. It will then present evidence from two
parallel surveys (n = 1000) run by Survation in October 2018, as part of the quantitative
element of our Leverhulme Trust 2-year research project, Lowering the Voting Age in the
UK.1 These two surveys drew on nationally representative samples of the UK electorate
aged 18 or over, and 16- to 17-year-olds who were either partially enfranchised or not
franchised, depending on where they lived in the United Kingdom. Both surveys capture
levels of support for Votes-at-16 alongside related attitudes, such as perceptions of adult-
hood and views on political education as well as more standard demographic indicators.
This enables us to specify a series of logistic regression models that explore the underly-
ing drivers of voting age support focusing on whether demographic or attitudinal factors
provide a stronger explanation of public attitudes on the issue and whether this is con-
gruent with the arguments made by those on either side of the Votes-at-16 debate.
The results from our surveys suggest that there is overwhelming support for lowering the
voting age among 16- to 17-year-olds. We also find that support for the policy appears to
have increased among those over the age of 18, to the point where there is an almost equal
division between supporters and opponents of change. However, our multivariate analysis of
the underlying drivers of support for Votes-at-16 highlights important tensions for considera-
tion by advocates and opponents. Within both our samples, support for lowering the voting
age appears directly related to the increasingly partisan nature of the issue, which mirrors
wider age-related and ideological divisions apparent in British politics. In demonstrating that
public attitudes towards Votes-at-16 have moved from apathetic scepticism to partisan polar-
isation, the article concludes by arguing that public opinion will likely play a more significant
role in debates about voting age reform.
Public opinion and voting age reform
According to Simon and Jerit (2007: 256), the role of public opinion in the policy-making
process has been traditionally seen as instrumental both in influencing politicians’ policy
priorities and outcomes. They note, however, that opinion is seen as increasingly
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