Voting in the next UK General Election: A guide for perplexed students.

Am I eligible to vote?

You can register to vote in a General Election if you are:
a UK or Irish citizen
OR
a qualifying Commonwealth citizen resident in the UK
and aged 18 or older on the day of the election, which will be December 12th, 2019.

Where do I register to vote/check if I’m registered?

You can register online here. You’ll need to provide your National Insurance Number (which you can usually find on a payslip), and the address you want to vote at. If you’re currently abroad you’ll also need your passport number.

When should I register?

As soon as possible. You must register by 5pm on the 26th of November, or sooner is you want to vote by post or by proxy (see below). Also, if you’re anything like me then you’re busy and you forget things. So it might be an idea to get it done now.

What happens if I can’t get out to vote on the day of an election?

This might happen because of illness; disability; work, study, or training commitments; or some unforeseen reason. If you know in advance that getting to your polling place will be difficult, you can apply for a postal vote or proxy vote when you register. These forms can’t be filled out online so you’ll need to allow time to do it by post. Even if something unforeseen happens on polling day, you can apply for an emergency proxy vote on the day of the election using the forms here (scroll down for ‘emergency proxy’).

Do I register at my term-time address or my out-of-term one?

You can register at either. Or you can register twice, once for each address — though you’ll only be able to vote once. Your polling place (the place where you may vote) will be close to the address you give when you register. So if you might not be able to get to one or both of your addresses on the day of an election, make sure you apply for a postal vote or a proxy vote when you register for that address. Remember: these forms can’t be filled out online so you’ll need to allow time to do it by post.

For example: Suppose you live in North Yorkshire during the vacations and in Fife during the semester, and you think there might be an election while you’re in Fife. You can: a) register to vote at your Fife address, and go to vote in person on the day; b) register at your North Yorkshire address, and apply for a postal vote for that address, and use that to vote; c) register at both addresses, and apply for a postal vote for your Yorkshire address, and decide any time up to the election which of these votes to use; d) register at both addresses, and apply for a postal vote for both addresses, and decide any time up to the election which of these votes to use. If you decide to vote in Fife and you are in Fife on polling day, you can mail in your postal vote OR you can take it to your polling place on the day of the election and hand it in in person. (Note: once you have your postal ballot paper you have to use it to vote — you won’t be issued with another ballot paper if you go to the polling place.)

In short, you have lots of options, and by registering early for both your addresses (and applying for postal votes where you might need them), you can keep those options open until polling day.

Does it make a difference where I register and vote?

That’s a complicated question and I want to say that I am not attempting to give advice here. I’m just giving a small amount of information that you might want to take into account as you make your decision.

As you might or might not know, you’ll be electing the MP for your constituency (i.e. the Member of Parliament for your area) under a first-past-the-post system. This means that the candidate with the most votes wins and every other candidate goes home.

In some constituencies, representatives from one political party tend to win by a large majority. For example, the constituency (or ‘seat’) of Liverpool Walton has been represented by Labour MPs since 1964, and Dan Carden (Labour) won 85.7% of the vote at the last election. As you can imagine, if a small number of voters in Liverpool Walton change their vote, it’s unlikely to change the outcome. Constituencies like this are referred to as safe.

Some constituencies are referred to as marginal. Here, the results tend to be close, and it’s not clear who will win at the next election. If you’ve just moved to St Andrews then congratulations: you are now in Fife North East, which is the UK’s most marginal constituency. Stephen Gethins (SNP) won the last election here by two votes.

You can find out which constituency any address is in here; you can find out the results of previous elections for that constituency here; and you can find out how any current MP has voted since they were elected here.

In addition, you can see which of two constituencies is more marginal here.

How do I find out more about the candidates in a constituency?

If you want to find out about the current MP for a constituency, you can see what they have done in Parliament since they were elected here. Most candidates will be standing as a representative of a political party, and that party will publish a manifesto online in the run-up to an election. On a more local level, all candidates will probably put out pre-election messages online or on bits of paper that come through your door.

(I realise this section looks a bit thin — because the answer will depend a lot on where you are and who is standing. Sorry.)

A website told me I should vote for [party], in order to keep [party] from winning. Is that true?

I’m a psychologist, not a psephologist, so I’m not an expert in elections. But I know ‘hang on a minute’ data analysis when I see it, and I would urge you to treat any advice from the internet on how to vote with extreme caution. You can see some of the problems with ‘how you should vote’ websites here, and some of the problems with graphs made by political parties trying to get your vote here.

Have I missed anything from this? Please tweet at me and tell me: