"Pollster Luke Tryl, from More in Common, told a Tory conference fringe meeting: "At the last election the average age someone started voting Conservative was in their 60s. It's now even later. "The Conservatives are basically only being kept afloat in the polls at the moment by the over 75 age category. Obviously, for demographic reasons, that is not a sustainable place to be.""
""We need to be where the voters are," says Luke Evans a Conservative MP, shadow minister and keen Tik-Toker. He says his colleagues should be embracing the social media platform more but warns colleagues to avoid the "Millennial Pause" - the two-second gap the older generation leave at the beginning of videos before starting to talk. "That's the biggest turn off," he says."
"One Young Conservative sought to offer some good news by telling the event that at Keele University the Conservative Society now had the biggest membership in a decade. He paused to allow for some impressed noises from the audience before adding: "We now have 11 members." With 16-year-olds likely to get the vote at the next election, the problem could become yet more acute."
Conservative support is concentrated in older age groups, with the average age of first-time Conservative voters rising into their 60s and over-75s propping up current poll numbers. Pollsters warn that reliance on the oldest cohorts is demographically unsustainable and that voters under 40 are turning away. University Conservative societies are often tiny, exemplified by a Keele society with 11 members despite being the largest in a decade. Potentially lowering the voting age to 16 would intensify the challenge. Calls for urgent action include targeted outreach and stronger social media engagement, especially on platforms like TikTok.
Read at www.bbc.com
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