Y Vote 2010 Mock Election results - Liberal Democrats the clear party of choice for young people

The Liberal Democrats win twice the amount of seats as the Conservatives and over three times as many as Labour with a massive 50.7% of the seats across the country.

The results of the 2010 Y Vote Mock Election and Google School Elections involving over 250,000 young people are now in and they show that young people support the Liberal Democrats as the party that they believe should be in Government. Students gave the Liberal Democrats a narrow majority over the other parties - 50.7% of the seats in constituencies where Mock Elections were held. The Conservative Party achieved 24.9% of the vote and Labour came in third, being elected in only 15.9% of seats. This of course differs wildly from the real general election result, in which Labour achieved 39% of the vote.   

Smaller parties achieved 8% of seats collectively, doing much better than smaller parties in the General Election, where they achieved 4% of seats.

The full results are as follows (number of seats and percentage of seats):

Liberal Democrats: 191 (50.7%)

Conservative Party: 94 (24.9%)

Labour: 60 (15.9%)

Independents: 8 (2.1%)

Green Party: 7 (1.9%)

Plaid Cymru: 5 (1.3%)

SNP: 5 (1.3%)

Sinn Fein: 2 (0.5%)

Monster Raving Loony: 2 (0.5%)

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP): 1 (0.3%)

Respect: 1 (0.3%)

Socialist Labour: 1 (0.3%)

Mock elections actively engage students with the political issues that concern them by giving them the opportunity to stand as party candidates, speech writers and canvassers.  Students voice their opinions by engaging in a fun and active citizenship exercise which provides an excellent introduction to the mechanics and issues involved in an election.

Michael Raftery, Director of the Hansard Society Citizenship Programme says:

"These results are a fascinating glimpse into young people's attitudes to the different parties and pose plenty of interesting "what if..." questions.  The number of schools and young people involved and the dynamism of their elections has been really impressive and we hope schools are able to build on this interest into the new Parliament".

The Y Vote Mock Elections website www.mockelections.co.uk is run by the Hansard Society and supported by the Electoral Commission and the Department for Children, Schools and Young People.