Voter ID at the 2024 UK general election

The 2024 UK Parliamentary general election was held on Thursday 4 July. This was the first time that all voters across the UK were required to show an accepted form of photographic identification at polling stations for a general election.

0.08% of people who tried to vote at a polling station in July 2024 were not able to because of the ID requirement

At least 0.25% of people who tried to vote at a polling station were initially not issued with a ballot paper because they did not have an accepted form of ID. Around two-thirds of these people returned later in the day with an accepted form of ID and were able to vote. 

By the close of poll, 0.08% of people who tried to vote in person were not issued with a ballot paper due to the ID requirement. This means around 16,000 people who tried to vote at a polling station were not issued with a ballot paper because they could not show an accepted form of ID.

The table below sets out how the figures from the general election compare with the scheduled polls in May 2023 and 2024.  

Table 1: Polling station voters who were initially turned away and percentage of those who did not return 

_{*  May 2024 figures are based on data from the 278 English and Welsh local authorities that submitted figures before the UK general election. Due to the timing of the UK general election, only limited data quality checks were possible on the May 2024 data – data which could not be checked was removed. Absolute numbers are not available for the May 2024 elections}

At the UK general election, the proportions of voters not issued with a ballot paper varied only slightly between nations (England 0.08%, Scotland 0.09%, and Wales 0.07%). There was greater variation between individual constituencies – from 0% of those who tried to vote at a polling station through to 0.4%.

The trend in the data above suggests that fewer voters, proportionally, are being affected by the voter ID requirement with each election.

However, we know that the data from polling stations underestimates the impact on voters for two reasons. 

Firstly, not all people who wished to vote in person will have got to the ballot issuing desk and been recorded by staff before realising they did not have accepted ID. For example, greeters were used in some polling stations to welcome voters, remind them about the need to show photographic ID, and help speed up the voting process (they did not have the power to turn people away from polling stations). Voters may therefore have been made aware of the requirement by greeters before they got to the ballot issuing desk where they would have been recorded as unable to vote.

Returning Officers were required to separate out data for polling stations with and without staff acting as greeters. Where data was provided, it appears to show that polling stations with greeters recorded a slightly lower proportion of people turned away (0.07%) compared to those without greeters (0.08%). This suggests that using greeters had only a very small effect on the data collected.

Secondly, and more significantly, some of the data that was returned to us is incomplete or inaccurate. The most common issues we found are:

• data returns being completed incorrectly, for example polling stations with more people returning to vote than were initially turned away
• missing individual pieces of data, for example on the reason why a voter was turned away
• missing returns from polling stations, for example where some stations in a local authority did not submit a data return
• blank returns from polling stations where it is unclear if a blank is equivalent to zero 

It is not possible to quantify the level of inaccuracy in the data but, overall, these types of errors would result in an underestimate of the impact of the ID requirement.

Around 4% of all non-voters said they didn’t vote because of the voter ID requirement

Some people who would have wanted to vote at a polling station may have decided not to try, potentially because they knew or became aware that they did not have accepted ID before attempting to vote. To understand the broader impact of the voter ID requirement, we carried out a representative public opinion survey across Great Britain. Our survey asked people if they voted in the elections and, if not, why they had chosen not to do so.

We found that 4% of the people who said they did not vote gave an unprompted reason that was related to the ID rules. Overall, the most common reasons given for not voting were related to specific circumstances including being too busy or working (10%), being away from home (7%), or medical reasons (10%). Views on politics were also significant reasons given by non-voters, including a lack of interest (9%) or trust in politicians/politics (11%).

The response to this unprompted question was similar in England and Scotland (4% and 5% of non-voters respectively) but was lower in Wales and Northern Ireland (both 1% of non-voters).

To better understand whether the ID requirement had played a role in people’s decision not to vote, we also asked people who did not vote a further prompted question, where they were given several answers from which to choose, rather than giving their own unprompted response. In this case, 10% of people who did not vote said that the ID requirement was the reason why they did not vote.

Graph 2: Non-voters: which of the following describes your experience

Again there was some variation in responses across the four nations, with England and Scotland showing a higher proportion citing voter ID reasons (10% and 12% respectively) than Wales and Northern Ireland (8% and 3%).

Overall trend of the impact on voters remains unclear

The polling station data above suggests a decreasing proportion of people being affected by the voter ID requirement over time. The public opinion data, set out in the table below, also supports this to some extent.

Fewer people gave ID as a reason for not voting in the May 2024 elections compared to May 2023. This suggests an increased understanding of the need to take ID to vote in person – at least among regular, local election voters.

In our previous analysis of voter ID at the local elections in May 2023, we highlighted that the requirement was likely to have a larger impact at higher turnout polls such as a UK general election, where people who do not always vote at local elections may want to take part.

The data from polling stations, showing a decrease in the proportion of voters turned away at each set of polls, does not support that analysis. We know that data underestimates the issue, although we have no evidence to suggest the level of underestimation is different across the three sets of elections (May 2023, May 2024 and the UK general election).

Our public opinion survey does find a larger proportion of non-voters at the UK general election saying (when prompted) that ID was the reason they did not vote compared to the two sets of local elections.

Table 2: Proportion of non-voters giving ID as a reason for not voting (unprompted and prompted)

However, we should be cautious in our interpretation of these results for two reasons:

• Non-voters at local elections are not the same as non-voters at a general election. The former is a much larger group which includes many people who will vote at some local and many general elections. Non-voters at a UK general election is therefore a smaller group and will contain a larger proportion of people who rarely or never vote.
• These are not precise estimates of those affected by the voter ID requirement – they are survey findings, subject to margins of error. 

Therefore, although there is some evidence that the headline impact of the voter ID requirement is decreasing over time, it is still unclear from this data what trend we should expect to see over the next electoral cycle.

We can compare the results to the experience in Northern Ireland at this general election, where photo ID has been required in polling stations since 2003 and where we asked the same questions in our survey. The data from Northern Ireland suggests that, while it may be unrealistic to expect these figures to drop to zero (for a UK general election at least), the wider impact of asking voters to show photo ID can be mitigated over time even at higher turnout polls.

Overall turnout was down but it is not possible to quantify accurately the impact of voter ID

Turnout on 4 July was 59.8%, down from 67.3% in 2019. This is the lowest turnout at a general election since 2001 (59.4%). The evidence from our public opinion survey found that some people who did not vote said it was related to the requirement to show photo ID. The combination of data from polling stations and the survey results also suggest that the impact of the voter ID requirement was felt more heavily by people who did not go to a polling station at all on 4 July, rather than those who tried and failed to show ID.

However, we cannot use these figures to accurately quantify the impact of voter ID on turnout.

Survey data is an estimate which can be subject to two separate errors. One is sampling error. This is limited by the robust, representative sample we have used particularly for the population as a whole, but it can be more of an issue for sub-groups of the population (such as people who didn’t vote).

The second issue is non-sampling error. This includes respondents not answering a question and/or not answering it accurately. We can see one of the impacts of this in the difference between the unprompted and prompted question responses, where respondents may be less likely to give an unprompted answer (even if it would be true) and more likely to give a prompted one (where choosing from a list can invite a response which may or may not be true).

The public opinion survey findings are therefore most useful for giving us a more rounded view of the likely impact of the ID requirement than the data from polling stations provides alone. The figures support our assessment that the polling station data underestimated the impact but they do not allow us to say to what extent turnout would have been higher without the voter ID requirement.

Voter ID affected some people more than others 

In our previous analysis of the impact of the ID requirement at the May 2023 elections, we found that some people, in relation to socio-demographic factors, were more likely to have problems in meeting the ID requirement. 

We concluded that this was the result of two broad factors: some people being less likely to have accepted photo ID and some people being less likely to be aware of the need to show ID when voting in person.

Some groups of people are still less likely to have the ID needed to be able to vote 

We know, from our previous research, that some groups were less likely to have one of the forms of accepted photo ID (in particular those renting from a social landlord, the unemployed, lower social grades, and disabled people).

Our evidence indicates that, at the July 2024 general election, at least some of these groups were more likely to have a problem voting in person as a result of the voter ID requirement.

The clearest evidence relates to the lower, C2DE social grade. When prompted, 10% of people who did not vote said that the ID requirement was the reason, with 6% saying that this was because they did not have the required ID. This was higher for C2DE non-voters compared to ABC1 non-voters (8% compared to 3%). Overall, 7% of C2DE non-voters gave an unprompted reason related to ID for not voting compared to 1% of ABC1 non-voters.

There is some evidence that, compared to the general population, disabled people and the unemployed had more of a problem, when trying to vote, in relation to ID ownership. However, the differences we find in our survey are not statistically significant.

Some people did not know they needed to show ID

While awareness of the ID requirement was relatively high, we have set out above how levels of awareness varied across the population. In particular, younger age groups, people from ethnic minority communities, and people in social grade C2DE were less likely to be aware of the ID requirement.

There is some evidence that these lower levels of awareness meant some people were also more likely to have difficulties meeting the ID requirement although the evidence is not conclusive. Our research finds that voters from ethnic minority communities were more likely than white voters to say they originally went to the polling station without ID but returned to vote later (2% of voters from ethnic minority communities compared to 1% of white voters). However, white non-voters were more likely than non-voters from ethnic minority communities to give an unprompted reason for not voting related to ID.

In relation to age, the picture is also mixed. When asked to choose from a list of reasons why they did not vote, overall 4% of non-voters said that this was because they went to vote without the required ID or with an ID that was not accepted. This was higher among 18-to-24-year-old non-voters (6%) and full time students (8%). However, older non-voters were more likely than younger non-voters to give an unprompted reason for not voting related to the ID requirement.

As set out above, the clearest evidence relates to the C2DE social grade where we find non-voters more likely to give reasons related to ID for not voting compared to the ABC1 social grade.

Voter ID did not have a significant impact on the method voters used to cast their vote

We asked voters if they cast their vote in the general election by their preferred method. Overall, 94% of voters said they had used their preferred method indicating that the requirement to show ID did not have a significant impact on choices of voting method.

Polling station voters were more likely to say they voted using their preferred method (96%) compared to postal voters (91%). People who voted by post, and indicated this was not their preferred method of voting, tended to say they had opted to vote by post as they were unable to get to a polling station on 4 July (often because of holiday commitments). However, a small proportion said their decision to vote by post was because of voter ID – either because they or their partner did not have ID or because they do not support the policy.

 

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