Egypt4u

The dramatic swing from Conservative to Labour in my home constituency has featured widely in the post election analyses. I had previously quoted a student population of 28,000, this would appear to be an outdated figure because on Newnight they were quoting 40,000.
This constituency covers Canterbury and the smaller North Kent towns of Whitstable and Herne Bay. Here is a screen capture from Google of Canterbury. You will see from the 1Km scale that this is a very small city. For reference I have put a small red spot (on centre at 12 o'clock about a third down) of the location of my house.


Only two of the three Universities are noted but I think this illustrates how such a large student population can influence elections and referenda. As I have also said, my objection relates to the fact that this is a floating population that will shortly move on and could only vote because they registered this as their home address. I believe there are other constituencies that were similarly affected by local student population but, as was said on Newsnight, Canterbury has the highest density of students in the UK.

Just my Saturday morning observation with a touch of aggravation.......

Can't blame you for feeling a bit irked by it all Grandad and the other thing is that if the same amount of guaranteed Labour voters were to be spread over all the different locations they have come from, then their influence would have had nothing like the same significence as it did in your home town.

Probably so H Now that Labour have latched on to the pool of support right in their midst I cannot see, what has been a very Conservative city, ever being Conservative again. And that is after 100 years.

Thinking ahead H, if Labour really get their act together they could have a similar effect on local politics.
The Tory Councillor for this local constituency lives two doors from me. We are just a short walk up the hill from Kent Uni and he has always been very supportive of all things student.
I think he probably feels a little uncomfortable right now about his position and may find in the next local elections in 2019 that his student support backfires.

There is something of a move here to lower the voting age to 16! Rears its ugly head from time to time. Guess that makes it easier for Politicians to sway the vote by way of students.........NOT that that is pertinent to Grandad's area here.....just sayin'