PolEcon 2024: December Edition
In early December, Public First returned to the PolEcon conference to poll a new batch of sixth form Politics students. Twice a year, these students come to Westminster to hear from a range of MPs and political figures. Before they arrive, and during the conference itself, Public First runs a short survey of the students. By no means representative of young people across the country, these surveys give us a unique insight into what some of the most politically engaged 16-18 year olds are thinking, and how these views change after hearing from some of our politicians.
In this round, we found the sixth formers were about as likely to vote Labour or Conservative as the public in general, they over-indexed heavily on the Liberal Democrats, and under-indexed on Reform. From the group we surveyed in March, Labour has declined heavily and Lib Dems increased their share. As we saw in March, once they’d heard from the speakers the main party to increase its share was the Green Party, this time hearing from Siân Berry, last time from Zack Polanski.

While partisanship has changed a bit, we see relative consistency on what they perceive to be most important political issues, and the ideological identification, of the conference attendees in March and December. They remained less concerned about immigration than the public, and identified as more left wing than the public. This December cohort also were more concerned about the impacts of Brexit, and when we asked, 79% indicated that they felt we should rejoin the EU, a view shared by only 50% of the public.


As we did before, we found that on key economic questions, the students tended to relatively aligned with the public in general. If the “left wing” identity shows anywhere it is through a greater “liberalism” on social questions, with the students less in favour of stiffer sentences for criminals, and less of the view that young people don’t have enough respect for traditional British values.

Of course, everyone’s favourite bit of the conference surveys is when they get to rate the performance of the political figures who spoke at the conference. Asked to indicate how their views had changed, if at all, a majority said their views were the same on Keir Starmer, Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. Notably, 34% felt their views on the Conservatives were less positive, 11% that they were more positive. The most notable changes were a majority (51%) saying they had less favourable views of Reform UK, and 51% saying they had more positive views on the Green Party. In March, the Greens saw a similar uptick in support and interest after the students heard from Zack Polanski. This time, while Siân Berry did shift the dial on the party and received the best responses to the question of who best represented the views of the students (37%) among the sitting MPs who had spoken in the morning, this was second place. Overall, the speaker who students felt their views most aligned with was…The Speaker (64%).