Wednesday 6 April 2016

Ha ha, serves them right!

From Open Democracy:

The Government’s rush to implement Individual Electoral Registration (IER) – against expert advice to phase-in the policy over a longer period – has knocked more than 800,000 people off the electoral register over the last year. The House of Commons Library warns: “Local authorities with high concentration of students appear to have been more affected by IER as their registers decreased more significantly than the average.”

Fewer young, poor and left orientated voters on the electoral register is likely to help the Conservatives in local and national elections on May 5, as well as skewing the soon-to-be redrawn boundaries of parliamentary constituencies to their advantage.

In the context of the European referendum though, that is a substantial number of likely Remain votes lost. The changes to electoral registration also puts Remain at a geographic disadvantage. Five of the ten top Europhile locations in Britain are London boroughs, according to YouGov.

But London has lost the highest number of voters, with 394,000 falling of the register since the 2012 Mayoral election. In Hackney alone, which was the eighth most pro-EU place in of Britain, there has been a 6 per cent slump in voter registration. A double victory for Conservative Mayoral candidate and Brexiteer, Zac Goldsmith, but more bad news for Remain.


Story emailed in by MBK.

6 comments:

Steven_L said...

Have you considered that maybe Sir Humphrey and 'the establishment' actually want to leave the EU and join the EFTA?

Mark Wadsworth said...

SL, clearly they don't. I wouldn't worry about EFTA, the EEA is the better one.

James Higham said...

Hope it works out that way.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, so do I, obviously. Maybe as a bonus, they will try and get all the disenfranchised back on the electoral register.

Lola said...

O/. EU. EFTA. EEA etc etc. What about just scrapping the whole lot and leaving it to the WTO?

Curtis said...

If the USA loves the EU so much, maybe it should join.