Abstract
Who says a general election campaign has little impact on young people? Not this group of journalism students
This was the election that had even the most seasoned political reporters scared to make firm predictions. First-time voters were baffled by the plethora of parties they could not vote for – let alone the ones they could – and by the contortions required to translate their X into the colours of the new government.
Students are part of the age range that is least likely to vote, and this election made participation additionally difficult. Among the promises we make to undergraduates in the Centre for Journalism is that we will teach them to understand politics. We introduce key themes through a compulsory first year course in British politics and government. Crucially, we discuss politics every morning at our mandatory editorial conferences, we send the students to witness their local councillors in action and we take them to the House of Commons.
While all this is going on, we make sure they write and film news stories about politics throughout their degree and we introduce them to political journalists such as Adam Boulton, John Humphrys and Paul Francis, the KM Group's excellent political editor who plays a vital role in their education as our associate lecturer in politics. A student cannot graduate from Kent's Centre for Journalism without understanding that politicians are a source of essential public interest stories. Nor does any graduate fail to understand journalism's duty to make representative democracy work by exposing its errors and advertising its achievements.
We know our approach works. This year, a final-year student secured a job with the BBC Politics Show South East during the campaign and will begin her BBC career as soon as she graduates. Another alumna secured a position with ITV News after proving her professional expertise as an intern covering elections. Several of our graduates write about politics for newspapers. Ten worked on election night to cover counts throughout Kent for ITV Meridian. So, Kent journalism students can do the work of political journalism, but how do they feel about politics? Does their professional education disguise apathy and alienation?
As Election 2015 loomed, we resolved to find out. The turmoil of a perplexing, rancorous and ostensibly indecisive campaign created an ideal opportunity. Our approach was rooted in the trust created by small-group tuition and one-to-one supervision. We asked a group of our students to discuss the campaign in a series of individual interviews between April 9 and May 7. Our sample included male and female undergraduates from all over the UK and every strand of opinion, from a socialist struggling to choose between Labour and the Greens to a Eurosceptic flirting with Ukip. Each member of the panel exercised their right to vote in a general election for the first time on May 7. The panel consisted of Alistair Iveson, Alex Norman, Katie Palmer, Cecily Snowball, Lauren Meechan and Ben Kosma.
Impressed by coverage
The panel took television coverage of the campaign seriously. They watched the BBC's five-way debate with interest and were appalled by the absence of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Several of our young women were impressed by Nicola Sturgeon's assertive performance. Other members of the group were appalled by the SNP's demand for influence in UK affairs. The panellists understood the ideological commitments of our national newspapers too well to be unduly influenced by their opinions, but were impressed by the wealth of policy detail and analysis available in the daily press in print and online. Several commented on the prodigious quantities of copy filed by correspondents, commentators and sketch writers, and noted the speed with which it was produced.
Regular reading included The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times and Daily Mail. A couple succumbed to our urgings to sample the Financial Times and found it “surprisingly helpful”. All used the BBC website and found its guides to policy valuable. Personal recommendations relayed via social media drew their attention to a lot of coverage including some entertaining material praising Ed Miliband. A few suspected that serious commentators might have underestimated the extent to which this material was intended to satirise more than to praise the Labour leader. The Independent and i were both popular, and one student praised in particular the Independent Voter's Handbook on “daily miscellany celebrating the facts, figures and folklore of British general elections”.
The themes and quotes that follow were gleaned from interviews conducted during the campaign. We are grateful to all of them for answering our questions so honestly and thoughtfully. However, given their determination to work as journalists we have chosen not to attribute opinions to individuals.
First, three weeks before polling day, we sought an indication of how each panellist thought they might vote on May 7. Two of our students had reached firm decisions from which they did not expect to waver. One said: “I've always thought I'd vote Conservative and I haven't changed my mind. My vote is based on the economy and how the last five years have gone.” The second was equally adamant in her support for Labour, but for different reasons. On national policy, no single party had convinced her. But, in her adopted home of Rochester and Strood, she was impressed by the Labour candidate, Naushabah Khan's, promises to end crises in local primary schools and at Medway Maritime Hospital. This student had met Khan and explained: “I've spoken to her a couple of times. She's a real human being.” The choice of an individual over a manifesto reflected a degree of discernment common among our panellists. Most had looked carefully at one or more of the minority parties. A student who was leaning towards Labour despite coming from a Conservative family explained that she had been hugely impressed by Sturgeon: “She's not afraid to make her voice heard.” The same student expressed an element of sympathy for Ukip and revealed that she might support them “if they were not so radical”.
Another began the campaign determined to choose Labour or the Conservatives. He felt the country should be governed by single party government with a solid majority. However, he admitted, he had looked at the Green manifesto carefully before concluding that it was “too new” to make a real difference on the national stage.
Similar scepticism informed the early thinking of another panellist who started the campaign “thinking hard about the Greens” before admitting: “I have resigned myself to Labour with a sigh. They are the most realistic left-wing party. I am going with my head not my heart.”
And such awareness of the need to vote tactically existed on the centre-right of our panel too. Here a student who began the campaign as a Liberal Democrat/Conservative waverer explained that his main objective was to support continued economic austerity. He also hoped to prevent the formation of a Labour/SNP coalition. He said: “I like the Liberal Democrats for their compassion on foreign policy and I'm pro-European”, but he expected to vote Conservative because the Liberal Democrats had no realistic chance of winning in his constituency.
This election was dominated by process rather than policy. The question of who could form a legitimate government, and whether backroom dealing would ultimately be more important than public opinion, weighed heavily on the minds of our first-time voters. They were generally in favour of proportional representation. One described it as a “fairer system” where “every vote counts more”.
Another student, who comes from the safe Conservative seat of Salisbury, admitted that he had decided to register his vote in Gillingham and Rainham where there was “more chance of something happening”. He intended to vote for the Liberal Democrats but said he would “probably vote Conservative” if he had gone to the ballot box in Salisbury.
Scarred by having to vote tactically
The group still bore the scars of last year's byelection in Rochester and Strood – on the Centre for Journalism's doorstep – when a straight fight between the Conservatives and Ukip put many Labour sympathisers under irresistible pressure to vote tactically. Most of our students believed such a choice demonstrated a failure of principle, and agreed with one final year undergraduate's judgment that “the whole point is to vote for who you want”. Only one student, a second year, approved of tactical voting and said that if he lived in South Thanet – where Nigel Farage was in a three-way battle with the Conservatives and Labour – “I would vote Tory to keep out Ukip”.
Despite being in favour of proportional representation, students were wary of its effects. Some saw benefits in increasing the Green Party's representation in the House of Commons, but their environmental idealism was offset by fear that Ukip's numbers might be similarly boosted. The students acknowledged that, in one of our panellist's words, “we are past the point where we can have a single-party government” but they were surprisingly sceptical about the minor parties’ ability to exercise power responsibly. One panellist identified Farage as a threat who “knows how to work people” but students said they “don't respect his policies”. Only one of our panel gave lukewarm backing to Ukip. She acknowledged that they make some arguments about British national sovereignty with which she sympathises, but she was adamant that their views on other issues placed them beyond the bounds of respectable opinion. Our panellists declined to support Ukip on similar grounds. They believe Farage's purple and yellow army represent a disreputable strand of politics.
Less predictably, the Greens – who courted young voters – faced similar criticism. One student noted that “Caroline Lucas being arrested for campaigning against fracking was just ridiculous”. Even students with Green sympathies feared that their views were utopian and “would not work after a long period of Conservative government and austerity”. Both Ukip and the Greens were dismissed as single issue parties.
The Liberal Democrats hoped against hope that they might escape punishment for their volte face over tuition fees. Our students confirmed their hope was forlorn. This first generation of £9,000 fee payers have not forgotten and they will be slow to forgive. However, our group did praise the party for its “compassionate point of view” and for maintaining a stable coalition with the Conservatives. Lest they sound too generous, students balanced their admiration for his party's principles with criticism of Nick Clegg for failing to find a distinctive voice in the campaign. One second-year panellist noted that the Liberal Democrat message was often “that they will pull Labour in from the left or the Tories in from the right”, which he interpreted not as evidence of a commitment to the middle way but rather as “a lack of principle”.
Young voters in this election felt the burden of history. They understood that they were casting their first votes in a contest that might elect the last prime minister of the United Kingdom. They knew it would frame the country's relationship with Europe and that the winner would struggle to meet popular priorities while dealing with the crushing burden of national debt. The rhetoric of the campaign told them these were crucial decisions: the pundits warned that the margin of victory might be as slim as a single seat.
In the Conservative/Labour marginal seat of Gravesham in Kent, one of our panellists faced a dilemma that, for us, defined the solemnity with which our young voters approached the polling booths. An idealist left-winger, his heart urged him to vote for the Greens, but he knew they could not win the seat. He identified Labour as the “most realistic left-wing party”, before its candidate was accused of putting Gravesend's large Sikh community under pressure to support him with their postal votes. “I want to vote for Labour, but I don't want to vote for their specific candidate,” he confessed. “I couldn't vote for Ukip or the Conservatives on principle. That leaves the Lib Dems but I don't feel inspired by them whatsoever”. But he also refused to abstain. “There are no circumstances in which I wouldn't vote,” he said. He left the interview tormented, but determined to decide.
We are humbled by the diligence with which our students exercised their duty to representative democracy. They care about politics. They think and debate about policy. They expressed frustration with the way the campaign was conducted and flashes of incredulity about the way politicians behave, but they are sceptical, not cynical. A couple of clear points of consensus emerged: they wish leaders would eschew spin and answer honestly; they believe multi-party politics are here to stay; and they believe proportional representation must be introduced urgently.
Too optimistic belief
So, have we succeeded in persuading a new generation to take representative democracy seriously? Our sole regret is that we may have succeeded too well. Our students believe British governments exercise immense power. They remain persuaded that a competent cabinet armed with a respectable popular mandate can protect the environment, control immigration humanely and secure continuing economic growth. In other words, they believe the levers of power still work and that modest adjustments to our electoral system can make them work better. We are concerned that they may be too optimistic.
In a globalised world in which bond markets may exercise more power than the president of the US and rogue nuclear powers are prepared to risk war with their neighbours, our panel's votes may not have the power they imagine. Perhaps we should do more to challenge our students’ assumptions without, we hope, undermining their impressive regard for Britain's democratic tradition.