Despite Labour polling at 48% of vote share according to YouGov in the seat, a July election could mean students heading back to their home constituencies to voter over the break, which raises questions about how the July 4th vote could turn out in the city.
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00:00Rosie Duffield has been the MP for Canterbury since 2017, with a student vote being attributed
00:06to helping her secure the historically conservative seat. But since then she has garnered
00:10controversy for her stance on trans issues and for going against the Labour leadership.
00:16With a July election potentially depriving her of the student vote,
00:20what will this mean for her 48% predicted vote share?
00:25As you can see over my shoulder there's a pro-Palestine University of Kent encampment
00:30right in the heart of the Canterbury campus and that would have you thinking that this is quite
00:34a politically engaged student body. But there's plenty of students here that I've spoken to
00:40who don't really know who they'll be voting for, don't tend to understand the big issues,
00:45or seem a bit disillusioned or clocked out with it all. The students that I did speak to on camera
00:52don't really seem to be that keen on the Labour candidate for the area.
00:57So I would probably vote Labour but I don't like the Labour candidate for this area so
01:03I was probably going to vote for the Greens.
01:06Rosie Duffield got quite a few controversial opinions which I don't like and especially
01:11they affect me less but my friends they find quite offensive some of them which
01:18doesn't sit well with me.
01:20What the average Canterbury population would vote towards and the student population
01:23would quite do different things. They have different interests, different concerns.
01:27Despite these passing students being against the Labour candidate
01:31Duffield feels confident she will come out on top come July.
01:36Obviously we're going in for a July election in the heart of the summertime where students
01:42may not be around. Are you worried about how that could impact your election chances?
01:47That's a really good question because people have talked about this since 2017 and certainly
01:51in 2017 when we have a slightly earlier election the students really helped and they were very
01:56enthused by Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party and that really helped me.
02:00But in the December 2019 election my vote went up 10 times and the students weren't here
02:06so I think we'll have to see. It'd be great if I can enthuse some students.
02:09Polling nearly 20 points behind is the Conservative candidate Louise Harvey-Huag.
02:16With national service and attacks on supposedly worthless university courses
02:20on the National Party's agenda, how confident does she feel as a university worker herself
02:27that she can win over young people?
02:29I think what goes in my favour is that I am also a student. So I do work at Christchurch
02:35and I have done for the last nine years but I'm also a student as well. My husband was a student,
02:39he's still paying off his student loan. My daughter was a student. I know full well
02:45what it means to be a student and how that can, you know, how voting is important to you. So I
02:51would say that actually I'm a really good candidate and an advocate for students given that
02:56I have experience working at the university.
02:59With both candidates facing their own battle against the tens of thousands of students
03:04that have the power to vote in Kent's only city,
03:07their turnout could prove critical to Canterbury's future.
03:11Oliver Leeds-The-Saxe for KNTV.
03:14And for a full list of candidates, just go to Kent Online.