What proportion of the UK electorate is made up of pensioners?

I was asked this question by a Russian contact who said that there the corresponding figure was 43% (which sounds very high). I make it 32% here.

In essence we want to know something like

(size of age group)*(proportion of age group who are eligible to vote)*(proportion of eligibles who are registered to vote)*(proportion of registered voters who turn out)*(proportion of age group who are pensioners).

The ONS gives population by 5-year age bands; we can estimate the 18-19 population as 0.4*(15-19 population). An IPR blog posting gives eligibility and turnout among registered voters. As they say, this ignores the question of non-registration. It seems likely that those groups with lower turnout will be less likely to register in the first place. If we set (proportion of the eligible age group who vote) = (proportion of those registered in this age group who vote)^(1.14), this gives a total effective electorate that agrees with the number of votes cast in 2019 to within 0.5%. (Number of votes cast is given by Wikipedia.)

The corresponding figures are given in the table above. The table below now gives overall results.

Now then, a number of sources suggest (but without giving definite sources) that as of 2021, the average retirement age for men is 65.1, while the average retirement age for women is 64.

So taking an age of 65 as being near enough at this level of approximation, it seems that pensioners make up about 32% of the effective UK electorate, in the sense of those who actually vote in elections.

With a further assumption about the ‘average age’ of the various age bands, it is easy enough to estimate the mean age of voters (that is, people who actually vote in elections) as 54.72 years.

Warwick University Ltd, 45 years on…

On a recent visit to Warwick University, I was told that it was now beholden to large employers in financial services and the students came from independent schools. And indeed, on the bus to Leamington Spa they were talking of Credit Suisse in reverential terms.

All of that reminded me of Warwick University Ltd by E P Thompson, which I pictured as condemning the domination of the university by the local motor industry.  A 2014 reissue has allowed me to check my impressions against the original, and it turns out I was broadly right.  Of course, nowadays something that provided large-scale employment for locals and non-graduates would be hailed as miraculous.  Thompson never really manages to overcome his patrician disdain for the process of making a living, which he manages to calumniate under the name of profiteering, while his doubts about the academic content of Business Studies would also apply to Medicine and Law for example.

It was interesting to see that the name ‘Warwick’ was chosen to extract funding from Warwickshire County Council and in those far-off days students who received a grant also felt that the world should be organised according to their wishes.

So in the end capitalism triumphed in spite of a couple of sit-ins at Warwick and the world where you had to be white, male, and a smoker disappeared too.

Pro-Russian party founded in England!

This advert from the edition of Pulse dated 15 May announces the creation of a party called ‘For Russia’ so as to champion and defend the rights and freedoms of Russian and Russian-speaking people living in Great Britain.  The party is founded on outspoken support for the policy of the Russian Federation and President Putin.  The website looks just like Edinaya Rossiya, especially the bear.

Well, if this is aimed at Russian citizens, they can hardly put forward candidates for election in this country, so perhaps they intend underground conspiracy leading to armed insurrection.  And if it’s for UK citizens, then you wonder where the Treason Act is when you need it–or that nice Mr Farage…

Best not to take this kind of nonsense too seriously!