Yahoo News Boost for Jeremy Corbyn as 90,000 young people register to vote in just one day
Over 90,000 young people registered to vote on Sunday in a boost to Jeremy Corbyn's election campaign.
A total of 90,200 18- to- 24-year-olds applied to vote on 21 May, according to the latest figures.
It came as the Labour leader made a last-ditch plea for students to register to vote by stressing its manifesto pledge to abolish tuition fees as early as this September.
Just 6,827 55- to- 64-year-olds and 2,628 65- to- 74-year-olds registered on Sunday- a day before applications close.
Speaking this morning Mr Corbyn accused the Conservatives of having "held students back for too long" by helping to treble tuition fees to more than £9,000 a year, claiming Labour wants to "lift this cloud of debt" by making it free for people to study at university in England.
His party is seeking to tap into the student vote, including those 18-year-olds sitting their A-levels and about to start university, as it bids to secure power at the General Election.
Commenting on the latest registration figures, Professor John Curtice, a political scientist at the University of Strathclyde, told The Independent: "It is disproportionately younger people [who have applied to appear on the register], but you have to realise that it's disproportionately younger people who are most likely to be missed off the register in the first place.
"The people who are most likely to re-register are people who have moved address, these are much more likely to be younger people and younger people are much more likely to have been missed off the original household canvass."
He added: "Between January and April 2015 there were five million applications of which only 1,350,000 resulted in names being added to the register.
"It's simply because one of the flaws in the system is you can't use it to check whether you're on the register. Therefore people end up applying even though they're already on it."
