The number of people who applied to vote in next month’s crunch general
election was almost a third higher than in 2017, Wednesday’s latest figures have revealed.
Some 3,850,828 applications were made in the 29 days between the snap election being announced and the voter registration deadline on Tuesday.
On deadline day alone, almost 660,000 people registered to vote – more than 250,000 of whom were under 25.
By comparison, in the 35 days leading up to the final application date in 2017, 2,938,291 applications were made, according to figures collected by the Electoral Reform Society. It means a 31% increase in applications in 2019.
In the run up to this year’s election, more than 1.4m applications to register to vote came from people under the age of 25 – the highest of any age group.
However, they were closely followed by people aged 25 to 34, with almost 1.2m applications made.
The smallest number of applications came from people aged 75 and over, with just over 45,000. Dr Jess Garland, who is the director of policy and research at the society, called the surge in applications “highly encouraging”.
“We’re seeing a major uplift in new registrations compared to the last election, with large numbers of young people signing up too – a traditionally under-registered demographic,” she said.
However, the society believes that around 1.4m of the applications made in 2019 could be duplicates, with no current system for voters to see if they are already registered. According to the group, around 36.9% of applications in 2017 were duplicates.
“We urgently need to update our archaic registration system to bring in the ‘missing millions’,” Garland added. “Britain needs a registration revolution, to ensure the right to vote isn’t a lottery but is something secured for all.”
Editor’s note: There is a slight disparity between the total number of applications based on age and the total number of applications based on type of application on the government’s website. The Cabinet Office has been contacted about this but the total variance is 31 people, or 0.0008%.Correction: A previous version of this story suggested that the number of applications had increased by two-thirds. However, this was based on 2017 data that did not include voter registration deadline day. Related...
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