The complexities of the student vote

All this stuff in the media about 'high proportion of students' etc seems to be missing many important considerations. It's not a cut and dried issue. So let's take this slow.

In Cardiff Central there is a total of almost 61,000 voters (as shown here). There are 21,500 students at Cardiff University and according to the nice people at UWIC registry there are just over 10,000 students at UWIC. Plus there are students at other academic institutions and in further education such as 13,000 at Coleg Glan Hafren.

To start whittling down the potentially huge numbers we have to consider those students attending Cardiff Central institutions but not living in Cardiff Central - such as the UWIC halls in Llandaff. Figures from the DfES in this article show 21% of students living at home a few years ago, with that number rising. Many students commute from living at home in other areas of Cardiff and South Wales (although, also, some of these home-dwelling students might be at 'home' in Cardiff Central). Then there are the fairly large and increasing numbers of students from abroad not eligible to vote in UK elections. And in FE not everyone will be eligible to vote because of their age.

To begin to sum up this chap estimates 20,000 student voters in Cardiff Central. I have heard estimates of around 13,000. There don't seem to be any firm figures.

We begin to get to the crux of the issue. The 'home' versus 'term time' debate. The very fact that students who spend 9 months of the year in Cardiff and yet refer to somewhere else as 'home' shows the strong ties maintained with the family base.

Students are entitled to be registered at both their 'home' and 'term time' addresses, though can only vote at one or the other at any given time. I am tempted to speculate that more students are registered at 'home' only than at both 'home' and 'term'. I'm basing this on a few factors: 1) at 'home' your parents do it for you, 2) away at university people move house more and may not update their details.

So I would venture that we lose student numbers because of that. But then also the 'home' votes may get lost by people not applying for postal votes. Or by naughty things happening to the postal votes. Now we've got students living in Cardiff Central who are registered to vote there. But they are probably also registered to vote at 'home' if home is not Cardiff Central.

This needs a choice. Do you vote 'home' or 'term time'? This can be affected by a myriad of different issues that I shan't go in to here - because I want you to tell me in the comments.

If you choose Cardiff Central you've come through a whole bunch of hurdles to get here. It's nowhere near as simple as it seems people like to think it is. And don't even get me started on the assumption that students act as some sort of block vote, as though we aren't from as many different social backgrounds, communities, areas, age ranges, genders, minorities and other variations as 'normal' people.

So let's try and get a sample going. Calling students in Cardiff Central! Are you registered to vote here? Will you choose to vote here? Will you vote at all?