UK: Surge in youth registrations for EU referendum

LONDON (AA) - Nearly half a million young people have registered to vote in Britain’s EU referendum in the past week, ahead of a deadline later on Tuesday.

Government figures showed 446,490 people aged under 35 had signed up since June 1, dwarfing the 62,627 voters over the age of 55 who registered in the same period.

Britain’s Electoral Commission said Monday was the second single busiest day in voter registrations since it began accepting online applications two years ago.

Alex Robertson, the commission’s communications director, told BBC radio on Tuesday: “There are about 7.5 million people we think who aren’t registered to vote who should be – a lot of them young, a lot of them people who have moved house.

“The number of people on the register is about 46 million, so about 15 percent of that are missing.”

The final deadline to register in the June 23 referendum is 11.59 p.m. local time (2259GMT) on Tuesday.

Recent opinion polling has shown younger voters are overwhelmingly more likely to back continued membership of the European Union, while older people were likelier to prefer Brexit.