The turnout in Eastleigh for the 2005 general election was 64.8% – slightly more than in the 2001 election which had a 63.8% turnout although this wasn’t as good as in 1997 when 76.9% of the voting population turned out to vote in this constituency.

I’m wondering what the turnout will be this year!

In March the BBC was reporting that the Electoral Commission believed that more than about 3.5 million people, and in particular 56% of young people (17-25 year-olds), in the country weren’t registered to vote.

Following the first leaders’ debate on television on Thursday 15 April there was a rush to register. Of the 460,000 registration forms downloaded from the Commission’s website since 15 March more than half were completed after the debate.

The Commission also ran a campaign on Facebook through its Democracy UK page to encourage unregistered voters to register and apparently about 14,000 forms were accessed via this link.

The Electoral Commission said that about 40% of people who went to the About My Vote page on their website were 18-25 years.  

In my office in Southampton we have two 18-year-old girls voting for the first time. To begin with neither had any interest in politics but since that first debate between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg they have both been hooked, even emailing questions to the candidates standing in their constituencies.

It would be interesting to hear if anybody – and particularly any young person – in Hedge End has been encouraged to vote by the televised debates or the Facebook campaign.