By Lewis Bagshaw
With the 2015 General Election coming up, just how interested are students in voting?
The government is poised to spend around £500,000 in an attempt to persuade students to register to vote, but it is feared that even if they register, many students wouldn’t bother to vote.
One student, Ryan Morgan, who is in his first year of studying Finance at De Montfort University, said: “For me, voting is pointless as the same thing happens regardless of the result and I won’t bother voting this year or perhaps ever.”
This is a common thought on voting for many students, indeed anti-voting Russell Brand said on Newsnight that students should not bother to vote.
Some students just don’t even care about politics and voting, offering no opinion on it, whether that means they are content or not with the current system, only they will know.
In contrast, the recent DMU elections were a roaring success, with many students taking part in the campaigning process and voting. This is perhaps due to students believing that university elections would have more meaning to them as it is more immediate to their lives and important for them.
Some students just don’t believe there is enough information out there for them to make a decision and vote, but this is something the government and media have been trying to address with increased funding for advertisements, new websites set up to advise and tv shows set up such as the Young Voters Question Time, however this programme hasn’t aired for a few years now.
There are some students who believe that they should be the ones voted in, first year student Luke Charman told me that he should be prime minister. whether or not this happens, only time will tell.
