To be worried the Young are going to be Ukip Voters.

[Jacobsmum1972]

My Ds school did a mock election and Ukip won by 71%. Followed by the Tories 16% and labour 11% lib dems 1.9% and greens a 0.1%.

These were year 9,10,11,12,13 in a mix of Middle and working class area.

Aibu to be worried that young people are xenophobic.

Anyone.

Bump

Your school might be. Greens won hands down here.

YABU - I'd imagine most of those people did that for a joke. Young people aren't stupid and the vast vast majority of young, first time voters that I know are incredibly savvy and overall quite liberal.

Yabvu. It's anyone's democratic right to vote as they wish.

Note in my DCs friendship groups they aren't. As above, I suspect they would mainly vote green ( or labour ).

At my school we've had to anonymise the parties as we couldn't find anyone willing to present conservative policies. We found kids willing to stand for UKIP but they were all children of immigrants who thought it would be funny.

I suspect they've perhaps heard more about UKIP than many other parties. Tbh at that age, I didn't really give politics much thought. I likely voted a token gesture, a party who wouldn't ever get in but I didn't much like the others, or who someone who had always been in locally - who my parents voted for even. It didn't actually mean anything to me but I felt quite strongly about actually voting.

Now I'm much older and have a family. I think I still think a little along the lines I did as a teen/early 20's. But now I vote with confidence that the party I am voting for fits with my own political beliefs.

Perhaps they have xenophobic parents.

Bah, my 7 year old wants UKIP to win because he like Nigel Farage's hair.

The young in this household are mainly swayed towards the SNP, which is unfortunate as we're in Wales. Only the idiot element of any age group are going to vote for (very poorly) disguised neo-Nazis like UKIP. Perhaps you should consider home ed/private school if standards are so low in your area.

I wanted to save the world when I was 15.

Now at 44, I want to save for a pension. I still think the world needs saving but I'm more realistic about the crap world we live in.

DS heard me snort at one of Cameron's policies on the radio last week. The Labour spokesperson gave a good reply but DS's was better

"That policy is pants".

See - if all politicians spoke like a 9yr old, things would be clearer.

I thought the main worry about young people was that they frequently don't vote at all.

YABU.
The young are more likely to be more idealistic (and less realistic) than older people. Round here, I think a lot of young people are voting green and the greens have a real chance of getting one of my city's seats. Fine by me.

They don't own cars and they walk to work/education. Cars aren't green. They put up signs encouraging people not to drive. Hilariously though, these young people just call up their parents or people with cars when they want a lift. This is what I mean about idealism.

The "Young "are the least likely to go for UKIP.

ukgeneralelection2015.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/yougov-poll-breakdown-by-age.html

It's the "old" we should be worried about

DS2 (yr7) came home telling me how UKIP want to chuck out all the immigrants and how/why this would be a very bad thing indeed (yes I know he needs to read more) so I don't think it's widespread among the young. My gut says the young are the least likely UKIP voters - it's the pensioners that worry me and they do vote

Nah, they're the least likely to vote UKIP. Greens are most popular amongst the youngsters I know, last election it was Lib Dem. I'd take a guess that young people are far more likely to be liberal in general or just apathetic.

Milifandom is a clear example of young people rejecting xenophobic and media centric politics. Makes me have a lot of faith in our young. I know some 16 year olds who would vote UKIP (even though his girlfriend is a Latvian EU migrant) but for every 1 of him there are 10 who would vote, green/SNP/labour.

YABU. my kids loathe them.

Well only half the year 13s can actually vote so I wouldn't worry too much.

Ukip are very in your face with their policies but people mature a lot in the few years after 17.

Don't know if it's because I go to a university with a large amount of working class students, rather than the more elite universities which are much more middle class, but you'd be hard-pushed to find a UKIP voter at my university. The majority of us are Labour (including the lecturers), with the exception of a few of us (Plaid Cymru/Greens) and one Lib Dem youth member who occasionally posts little reminders that they had no choice but to renege on their promises...

A lot of us are very much against UKIP, my Facebook newsfeed is full of anti-Kipper posts.

I disagree about voting lib dem and green though, I was just old enough to vote at the last and none of my friends voted for either as far as I know.

When one was done at a local school, many moons ago, the kids all voted for the anarchist party. The irony was lost on all of them.

However, the real reason was because they had a funnier campaign, run by the cooler kids in school. They gave away free sweets.

YABU. At a secondary school, it will have been as much about the personal popularity of the students that were chosen to represent UKIP and the way they promoted themselves around the school as it was about policy.

My natural thought would be that younger voters are less likely to be UKIP than other groups, but whatever their voice turns out to say, if it does, then I'd be glad it's being heard.