Joe Greenwood-Hau analyses our 2025 UK Youth Poll data to show that women, less educated people and those on lower incomes, as well as less politically active people, say ‘don’t know’ more when asked questions about politics. But the differences are small, and young people in all groups are generally willing and able to give their views about politics.
The John Smith Centre exists to tackle the barriers that stop young people from getting involved in politics and civil society, especially those from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds. To do this, it is crucial that we understand which young people are disengaged from the debates and ideas that make up our daily politics. Amongst them, an often-overlooked group is those who are unwilling or unable to express their opinions on politics and society. Fortunately, our 2025 UK Youth Poll data allow us to look at which young people say they ‘don’t know’ when asked a range of questions about political issues.
People who consistently answer ‘don’t know’ in surveys about politics may be indicating a general discomfort or unfamiliarity with the topic, or a lack of confidence in the area. As such, those answers may reflect marginalisation not just from political activity but from the topic of politics more generally. Consistent with this, our data show that women, less educated people and lower income people, as well as politically inactive people and those who use fewer news sources, tend to give more ‘don’t know’ answers to the political questions that we asked.
We start by looking at how the number of ‘don’t know’ answers differs across different demographic groups, focusing on the 16 survey questions that explicitly tackled political topics. To do this, we run regression models including people’s demographic characteristics alongside their political participation and the number of news sources they use.[1] We then produce graphs that show the predicted number of ‘don’t know’ answers to political survey questions amongst different demographic groups. The first thing to note is that, amongst young people (aged 16 to 29), there is no relationship between age and number of ‘don’t know’ answers.[2] 16-year-olds and 29-year-olds (and everyone in between) offer just as many no opinion responses to our political questions. This is particularly important given the announcement that 16 and 17-year-olds will be able to vote at the next UK general election, since they feel just as able as their older counterparts to offer political opinions.
By contrast, women tend to give around one more ‘don’t know’ answer across the 16 questions than men do, which is in line with research that shows they are sometimes less willing to answer survey questions or more willing to admit when they do not know an answer.[3] People with the lowest level of education (no formal qualifications) also offer around one more ‘don’t know’ answer to our political questions than do their counterparts with the highest level of education (degree or above). Finally, there is a similar reduction in the number of ‘don’t know’ answers offered when we move from the lowest to the highest income bracket. All of these differences are small: across 16 questions relating to politics, the demographic groups we are looking at do not differ by more than one ‘don’t know’ answer.[4] The differences that we observe do, however, reflect the wider tendency for people with lower levels of education and lower incomes to be less engaged with politics. In line with that observation, we also see a larger relationship between ‘don’t know’ answers and participation in political activities.
When looking at the number of political activities that people have done in the last year, the ‘don’t know’ answers that they give declines from three for people who did no activities to zero for people who did six or more. This is a much larger difference than the ones we observed between demographic groups and shows that, unsurprisingly, political participation and willingness to express political views go hand in hand. We also observe an effect of using more news sources: people who use no news sources give between two and three ‘don’t know’ answers, whilst people who use nine (the maximum) give between one and two. So, staying informed by using multiple news sources is linked to willingness to express political opinions.
What do we take away from all this?
1
First, the number of ‘don’t know’ answers given in response to our political questions is generally low. The average number of such answers is two, and 75% of people offer no opinion for between zero and three of the 16 political questions. So, young people are generally willing and able to answer those questions and express their political opinions.[5]
2
Second, there are only small differences between demographic groups in how often they say ‘don’t know.’ Young people across different ages, genders, levels of education and levels of income only differ a little in their willingness and ability to express political opinions.
3
Third and finally, to the extent that there are differences between groups, they reflect wider marginalisation of women and people with lower levels of education and incomes. And the stronger relationship between political participation and ‘don’t know’ answers shows that marginalisation does not only affect political activities but also that most basic element of politics: having, and being willing and able to express, political views.
[1] The results are based on ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions in which the dependent variable is total number of ‘don’t know’ answers given. The demographic variables included in the models are age (in years), gender (man, woman, other), ethnicity (White, Mixed, Asian, Black, Other), highest educational qualification (9 categories), gross personal income (12 categories), and NEET (not in education, employment or training) status. The model also included measures of anxiety (five categories), happiness (four categories), number of political activities undertaken (between 0 and 9), and number of new sources used (between 0 and 9). All independent variables except age, number of political activities and number of news sources are treated as categorical in the models. You can see the full OLS regression results tables here.
[2] This differs from the picture for the overall number of ‘don’t know’ responses across all the questions in the survey, in which older people give slightly more such answers.
[3] The ‘Other’ gender group has too few respondents in it for us to be confident in whether the number of ‘don’t know’ that they give reflects a general tendency amongst that group in the population.
[4] These differences are, however, statistically significant at 95% level, meaning that we are confident that they are likely to reflect differences in the population, and that we did not happen to randomly gain a sample of young people with differences that do not reflect those in the wider population.
[5] The low number of ‘don’t know’ answers might also indicate that the questions we asked about politics were easy to answer or related to salient issues that most people have opinions one. It is also likely that, as is usually the case, our representative online sample of young people includes a disproportionate number of politically engaged people, who are more likely to have political opinions that they are willing to express.
