SCHOOL ELECTIONS

One of the things I was busy with in January was running a school election. Research has shown that if a young person votes for the first time for a particular party, then they are likely to vote for that party for the rest of their lives. Now combine that thought with two others. First, it is quite likely that the voting age will at some point be be reduced from 18 to 16 (witness the Scottish independence referendum). Secondly, old people the world over vote more regularly than young people. So it becomes important for all political parties to get young people interested in politics and voting.

At the end of January the Danish Government held a school election for all children in their last year of ordinary school (i.e. 15/16 year olds). Representatives of the parties' youth wings came to my school the day before for a debate, which I chaired. It was passionate and well argued.

Both the debate and the election showed two clear trends. First, young people are more to the right than the population as a whole; if the election were replicated at a national level, then the current left of centre Government would be decisively booted out. Young people are more individualistic and less keen on "fællesskab" than previous generations. Secondly, the strong showing of the far-right Danish People's Party at national level is not replicated amongst the young. They are much more tolerant of immigrants, homosexuals, foreigners and other DPP bogeymen than their parents (and especially grandparents) are.

However, this was a school election, not a real election. All those who voted in the school election will be ineligible to vote in the general election due this year, and will probably have to wait until 2019 before they can. It's still not clear whether they will care enough to do so.

Walter Blotscher