Student vote gives BC NDP a majority, Greens official opposition
Posted October 31, 2020 4:29 pm.
Last Updated October 31, 2020 5:53 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
BURNABY (CityNews) — Alongside the B.C. election, 90,000 students took part of their own mock election and political science experts say the results make it clear the younger generation is concerned about a different set of issues than older voters.
Across the province, students who were not voting age casted their mock ballots in the B.C. Student Vote program.
The election result showed that if B.C. student had the only say in the provincial politics, the BC NDP would form a majority government with the BC Green Party forming the official opposition.
“There’s obviously a process of learning and development that goes along as people age and their perspectives will change — so, different cohorts will have different perspectives. There’s a quote a truth attributed to Winston Churchill that effectively everyone is a socialist in their 20s and a conservative in near 30s. So there’s an assumption and there’s some truth to that,” Stewart Prest, a political scientist at SFU, tells CityNews.
While the mock vote is not exactly a telltale sign of where parties are headed in the future, Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley says it’s clear younger voters care about housing, education, health care, and “different kinds of action to help get them through the obstacles they face.”
“A lot of them are in line with the NDP and more than older voters younger people are in line with the Green Party — I think there is much greater environmental awareness amongst teenagers than there is, say with the oldest voters,” Telford adds.
This year’s vote was the sixth to take place but because of COVID-19 and the snap election, the turnout was down compared to previous years.
