Supervisor: Dr Resul Umit | Durham University.

Project background 

My research project aims to assess the policy outcomes of votes at 16, specifically responsiveness i.e. do political parties cater their policy platforms to the new younger electorate, in devolved elections in Scotland and Wales. This will hopefully contribute to both the wider UK policy debate around votes at 16, as well as assess the effectivness of the outcome and impact generated by votes at 16 from an academic context, beyond the current literature surrounding policy process i.e. how votes at 16 affects electoral turnout and long term voting habits.

My interest in this project was driven by a strong interest beyond purely the effects on political participation, but examining the long term systematic impact on the party political system and by extension the influence afforded to this new young electorate. 

My research study will be a comparative mixed methods study of the policy outcomes of votes at 16, since being introduced in devolved elections in Scotland in 2016 and Wales in 2021. This will utilise content analysis of the major Scottish and Welsh political parties manifestos since 1999, comparing not only the prevelance of explicit youth mentions of youth, but also discourse framing analysis to assess how parties framing of youth changes immediately upon the introduction of Votes at 16

With the current Labour government proposing to introduce votes at 16 for national parliamentary elections from 2029 onwards, there will undoubtedly be further significant change to the political landscape. The outcomes of the introduction of votes at 16 are unknown, in terms of how political parties cater to an expanded electorate.

As such by studying how party platforms have shifted  in Scottish and Welsh devolved elections, since votes at 16. The research findings can serve both to feed into the policy debate around effectiveness, as a valuable insight into how the political landscape on a national level could change.

Research question

How has the implementation of votes at 16, affected political policy platforms in Welsh and Scottish devolved elections? Do political parties effectively cater to the youth electorate? And how do their framing of youth immediately shift in response to votes at 16?

Research objectives 

• Examine if party platforms in Scottish and Welsh devolved elections have catered increasingly to an expanded younger electorate post introduction of votes at 16?
  
• Examine if there has been and how the largest pro and anti votes at 16 political parties framing of youth shifts in the immediate term in response to Votes at 16?

Methodology

I will conduct this study by first conducting a comprehensive literature review into  rational choice theory in relation to voter behaviour specifically in relation how political parties cater to the electorate,  literature on group appeals and framing analysis and becoming/belonging frameworks surrounding youth citizenship to support my qualitative analysis

Then I will collect all the manifesto documents from 1999 -2026 for 4 or 5 major Scottish and Welsh political parties. Before defining a word dictionary of terms that refers to young people/youth and  through carrying out a content analysis, count the number of sentences that contain relevant keywords against the total sentences in each manifesto to get a measure of prioritisation of youth.

In addition I’ll carrying out a short discourse framing analysis, manually reading the manifestos of the largest pro and anti votes at 16 political parties in each region, in the election prior and post votes at 16. Meaning i will have 8 manifestos across 4 political parties in total. Using quasi sentences for contextual information, i will assess if there has been and how political parties shift their framing of youth in the immediate term in response to Votes at 16. I will use a coding framework which  is based on Lister (2007) becoming/belonging framework on child sociology, which was later applied to youth citizenship by Woods (2022).

This study adapted this framework to examine belonging from the context of youth policy, in that are young people viewed as complete political actors?,

Finally from this data, I will compare cross nationally between Scotland and Wales, to identify any similar trends in policy in response to the implementation of votes at 16.