Stand Up Be Counted: Youth Vote Stirring

Britain's political party leaders will tomorrow engage in an unprecedented live effort to engage under 25s in the political process.

As part of Sky News' Stand Up Be Counted campaign , party leaders will be quizzed live on TV news and on Facebook by groups of young voters.

It is the first major multiparty TV event in what is set to be a long election campaign.

In recent elections, the popular wisdom has been that young people don't vote, won't vote, and there's less of them.

That wisdom was and still is true. Elections have been all about older voters.

Directing some pre-election largesse to the over-60s has been an iron rule of vote-getting. Bus passes and TV licences mysteriously become free before elections.

Under the coalition, after years of grinding low interest saving penury, the over 65s were exclusively offered up to 4% interest rates on £10bn of savings bonds last month by the Government's National Savings.

But many political realities are changing right now.

Around the country, around Europe, and around the world, the youth vote is stirring.

From Scotland last Autumn, to Greece last week, Generation Ignored is becoming Generation Engaged.

The crucial change is the capacity of technology to coalesce small niches of like-minded citizens into groups of motivated activists.

In Britain, students waiting for lectures outside City University are engaging with the election.

The environment and of course tuition fees are high up on the list, but there is the odd expression of sympathy for Nick Clegg, and praise for coalition's handling of the economy.

The days of the tuition fee protests and fire extinguishers thrown off the top of CCHQ seem a long way off.

I joined Mr Clegg for a lunchtime leaflet drop in Rotherhithe last week. More than any party leader has his work cut out in winning young voters back.

He said: "We weren't able to deliver our manifesto in full because we didn’t win the General Election. On tuition fees of course, we did the next best thing."

The polling evidence is pretty clear: young voters have more liberal social attitudes than average.

For instance, in last month's YouGov survey of top issues, immigration came top of the list of voter concern generally, driven by the concerns of over 65s (67% thought it was top issue) and over 50s.

But it was only fourth for 18-24 year olds, and not even in the top ten for that age group among the issues affecting them personally.

Likewise, concern about Europe is driven by older voters, 29% of over 60s consider it a priority issue, just 8% of young voters.

Meanwhile, housing and education are big specific priorities for the under 25s, but not prioritised by older voters.

That might be changing now.

Young housing campaigners have launched a series of protests on the issues of high rents and low housebuilding.

They aren't a majority of the electorate in any constituency, but there are more than a few Conservatives a little twitchy about the as yet meagre Tory "offer" for "hardworking" young professionals, not in possession of their own house or a likely inheritance.

There is a lack of faith in major party politicians understanding the reality of insecure flexible work with high housing costs.

Until very recently Labour might have been expected to be the only electoral beneficiary of extra young voters.

But the surge in Green and SNP support has changed that for now.

Certainly, in my day with young voters, the unrepresentative survey showed clear support for Greens, garnered by people connecting directly online.

But it's not really old school radical political campaigns, and more self-concern for a "selfie generation".

Top Conservative thinkers believe this digital individualism offers some routes in for the Conservatives in elections to come.

Some polling shows young voters markedly less enthusiastic than other age groups about the welfare state.

The main driver behind renewed engagement of young voters would appear to be forms of self-interest.

A generation waking up to the fact that apathy has had a price.