Polls have put various parties in second place for young people during the General Election campaign (PA)

Fact check: It is unclear which party is second favourite among under 30s

By Will Grimond, PA
14:49 - June 12, 2024

A video on TikTok by a parliamentary candidate claims that Reform UK is “the most popular party with under 30s other than Labour”.

Evaluation

Major UK political polling agencies do not tend to include figures for 18 to 30-year-olds in their voting intention polling. This means it is not possible to ascertain voting intention for under-30s as a group using publicly available polling data.

For the age groupings that are used, it is difficult to say which party is currently behind Labour among young people, as there is significant variation between polls.

The facts

None of the major polling companies considers under-30s in isolation when breaking down their polling data. Most of them either group together those aged 18 to 24 years old, or those aged 18 to 34.

Labour have a commanding lead among the youngest group in the results of seven polling companies. However, second choice varies significantly from survey to survey.

Guidance for journalists from the British Polling Council warns about looking at small sub-groups within polls on their own. It cautions that there is a degree of random variation between surveys, which becomes more acute when smaller sub-groups are considered in isolation.

Breaking the results down by age can allow a smaller number of respondents to have a greater impact on the results. Polling companies may also use a different set of respondents for each survey, meaning results often change slightly poll-by-poll.

A poll from Redfield & Wilson Strategies, using fieldwork from June 7 to June 10, shows Reform UK a whisker ahead of the Liberal Democrats for second place among 18 to 24 year olds. This put both parties on 10%, but Reform had 74 respondents supporting the party, versus the Liberal Democrat’s 73.

This poll did use a large sample of 10,000 respondents, including around 1,000 respondents in this youngest age group.

The latest results from Survation (download link) also put Reform ahead of the Liberal Democrats in this age group, again by one respondent – but with a much smaller sample, of just over 100 people in this age group.

As of June 12, the last four sets of results from YouGov show 18 to 24 year olds favouring either the Green party or the Liberal Democrats, preceded by a three-way tie between these parties and Reform on May 24.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives came second in this age group in a poll for Savanta on June 11 (download), while Techne and JL Partners (download) separately put the Conservatives in second among under-35s.

The most recent poll for Opinium (download) – with fieldwork on June 5 and 6 –  instead gave a narrow lead to the Green party among this group.

Links

The video on TikTok (archived post and video – downloads to computer)

British Polling Council – Advice for Journalists (archived)

Redfield & Wilson Strategies – voting intention 7-10 June and downloadable data (archived page and data – downloads to computer)

Survation poll, June 6 – downloads to computer (archived)

YouGov voting intention tracker and downloadable data (archived page and data – downloads to computer)

Savanta voting intention poll – downloads to computer (archived)

Techne voting intention tracker (archived)

J.L. Partners election tracker – downloads to computer (archived)

Opinium voting intention polling – downloads to computer (archived)

Election Check 24

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