{"id":269367,"date":"2025-07-17T13:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T13:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269367\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T13:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T13:05:09","slug":"uk-to-let-16-and-17-year-olds-vote-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269367\/","title":{"rendered":"UK to let 16 and 17-year-olds vote \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government called the move the \u201cbiggest change to U.K. democracy in a generation,\u201d highlighting that young people \u201calready contribute to society by working, paying taxes and serving in the military.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the decision is expected to broadly benefit center-left parties, the precise impacts of the change are less clear.<\/p>\n<p>Polling of 16-to-18-year-olds conducted by Merlin Strategy and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/41421587-bc65-432a-a8ca-7368d39177c7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">featured<\/a> in the Financial Times indicated that about 33 percent of the cohort would vote Labour, followed by 20 percent voting Reform and 18 percent opting for the Green Party.<\/p>\n<p>Political scientist John Curtice told POLITICO in an interview that the political impact of the change would be \u201cmarginal,\u201d estimating that the new bloc of voters \u2014already less likely to vote \u2014 would add between three and three-and-a-half percent to the total electorate.<\/p>\n<p>Curtice said, however, that \u201cage is the biggest demographic division in our electoral politics\u201d and that younger voters would be \u201clikelier to vote for Labour or the Greens\u201d than Reform. \u201cThe one party to celebrate are the Greens,\u201d he said. For Labour to \u201cfully benefit\u201d from the change, they would have to \u201cfend off a challenge from the Greens,\u201d Curtice said.<\/p>\n<p>The opposition Conservatives criticized the \u201crushed\u201d announcement, with Shadow Communities Minister Paul Holmes claiming Labour\u2019s unpopularity was \u201cscaring them into making major constitutional changes without consultation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government called the move the \u201cbiggest change to U.K. democracy in a generation,\u201d highlighting that young people&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[9311,748,1193,31,33,393,4884,384,1144,712,16,15,1764,1202],"class_list":{"0":"post-269367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-angela-rayner","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-british-politics","12":"tag-democracy","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-england","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-nigel-farage","17":"tag-northern-ireland","18":"tag-scotland","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-wales","22":"tag-westminster-bubble"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114868723816460946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}