Students’ Union elections across the country are known for an especially low turnout. The 2023 cycle saw a low in recent years of 10.78%, the nadir of a sustained decline, however, last year’s cycle saw an uptick in turnout to 23.69%. So how do we build on that?

York SU – then YUSU – put the increased turnout down to stronger messaging and awareness of the function of the student union, as well as fewer positions – and races to keep on top of – up for grabs.

From a Freedom of Information request to the University, Vision has analysed turnout figures from the low of 2023 and high of 2024 election cycles, and piece together some highlights of how you decided your representatives, and what that means when you cast your ballot.

Students studying areas related to politics had more enthusiasm to vote

The graphs here show the 2024 voting breakdown by the department in which the University of York voters studied. Due to being a small group of students of whom comparatively many cast a ballot, Natural Sciences took the crown in both 2023 and 2024. Naturally political Humanities subjects come in later, but you may be surprised (though it doesn’t show up on the charts) that Electronic Engineering came in second, even ahead of Politics.

Perhaps Health Sciences comes last due to being on a vocational/theoretical mixed vocational course, and not having the time to engage in student politics. Having the second-highest total number of students and yet the least input in votes – a title it has won from the Centre for Women’s Studies, which held it in 2023, means its potential influence in choosing university representatives is heavily diluted.

Voting increased in student networks

Higher education discussion site, WonkHE, noticed a nationwide trend of a positive impact on turnout from students being more concerned with student and national politics. They also noted a positive trend of international student involvement, leading to unions nationwide electing a more diverse board to represent students last year.

While we cannot infer a breakdown of what kind of voters cast their ballot for each candidate, we can show you the student networks – groups connected through shared circumstances at the University – and an increase in turnout.

Please note that we haven’t included networks which disbanded between the academic years 2022/23 and 2023/24.

In many cases, while the raw numbers of voters in these demographic networks have been falling (apart from international and mature students), the gap between the numbers voting and the total number of network members has narrowed, suggesting an uptick in interest.

It is also worth noting that many of the part-time positions which granted more exclusive representation for these student networks at York SU had been removed, as six of them in 2023 received no nominations. Thus the increase in turnout in 2024 is notable, given that raw votes for this group had declined since 2021.

Societies also saw vote increase

Societies in 2024 reported a higher turnout than in 2023.

A side-effect of a general increase in interest and turnout at the last election was the vote among student societies. Most student societies reported an increase in turnout, or that turnout had remained the same (as there had been no change in the groups’ memberships).

When examining the changes between 2023 and 2024 in societies, we excluded societies with memberships of fewer than 10 in either year, so that those with a disproportionately smaller membership didn’t sway the outcome.

It’s impossible to gather anything but a general trend from this, however, we can see that the percentage of societies voting has gone up, with the number of societies (of 10 or more members) with at least 50% voting rising from just six in 2023 to thirty-three in 2024. This indicates an improved turnout. Promisingly, the subject matters of societies taking the top spots are more varied in 2024, reflecting a broader increased interest in the elections.

Of all things, the Bellringing Society were top in 2023, but the chimes of doom came in 2024, when less than half of its members cast a ballot. In both years, the Catholic Students’ Society, the Labour and Conservative parties; and media publications The Lemon Press and, proudly, York Vision, have rounded off the top.

When we consider the top ten societies’ growth between the two years, we can see that in the Catholic Students’ Society, the Entrepreneurs, Japanese and Islamic Societies, as well as the United Nations Association, the tallies for voters all grew out of proportion to the change in members between those two years. This may suggest that existing members who did not vote in 2023 decided to vote in 2024, which would confirm York SU’s findings that the increased messaging around the elections and the shortening of the ballot paper worked. On the flip side, the German, Formula 1, Global Affairs and Nursing Societies all increased due to a flat level of voting and membership numbers decreasing.

In 2023 we could see a trend of election fever being concentrated in those who already have enthusiasm for, or ambitions within, politics of their own, however, the impact of this in 2024 was more limited and the top societies voting were less concentrated in the humanities sector, suggesting there is room to grow.

Are the election results imbalanced?

A tally of the final markings suggests that, while the students of the faculty make up the lion’s share of the electorate, STEM has the lowest turnout, making the voters a disproportionate sample of the full electorate.

While STEM members have the highest raw tally of voters, it has the lowest percentage of those eligible to vote doing so. Whether the lack of 79.24% of potential STEM voters is a problem remains to be seen and cannot reasonably be derived from the data given to us. In an election run under first-past-the-post like UK Parliament elections, in which the most votes win, it might be problematic that the smallest piece of the pie has a higher percentage of voting members. Especially when combined with the Social Sciences (which has a similar proportion of influence to its percentage of students), they make up half of SU voters.

York SU elections run on the single transferable vote. Voters rank the candidates by preference, and losing candidates’ votes are passed to their second choices until one candidate has half of the vote. This mitigates a few problems of having a disproportional voting base, yet the elections still do not reflect the York student community.

We can’t say definitively whether the large influence given to Arts and Humanities students alone is enough to swing the election. However, the turnout details of the last two years may suggest that some sections of the student body may not yet exercise the influence they have the chance to wield.