A new wave of voters is preparing to enter Macclesfield’s polling booths for the first time.
The Express has been speaking to 18-year-old students from Kings and All Hallows High Schools who will be voting for the first time to find out how clued up they are about the election.
All Hallows student James Gillan, 18, lives in Paradise Street with his mum and brother Joe, and is looking forward to going to York University in September to study history.
He said: "I have been looking forward to the opportunity to vote, but I only think about a quarter of my year will actually vote. A lot of them don’t really know the difference between the parties, I don’t think the information is really set out very easily."
James added: "I haven’t really made my mind up yet. I am leaning towards Liberal Democrats but in terms of different candidates in Macclesfield, I haven’t really heard of many of them.
"I think you have to look at the bigger picture, you want someone who can represent the area. I don’t like the idea of a majority party just finding someone from anywhere and dumping them in our constituency. It’s a serious decision."
Fellow All Hallows student David McCay, 18, lives on the Moss with his parents, two brothers and a sister.
He hopes to study Further Maths at Edinburgh University, and is also yet to decided who he is going to vote for.
He said: "I have an interest in politics but I’m not sure who I am going to vote for yet. I don’t really discuss it with my parents, they have their opinions but I want to form my own. I definitely know I am not voting Conservative. I haven’t looked too much at the individual candidates because I don’t want a Conservative government, I don’t think it will be a good thing for the majority."
King’s Sixth Form student Sarah Regan is a staunch Liberal Democrat and is confident she will vote for the party in the forthcoming elections. She and her friends regularly talk about politics.
But she admits not many kids her age are as confident about voting.
Sarah, who hopes to study English Literature at Cambridge in September, said: "I am definitely going to vote for the Liberal Democrats. I think their policies are a bit better and I find that I have fewer objections to them than the others. With Labour and Conservative there is always a ‘but’ at the end, and it makes it harder to work out what they actually are standing for."
"I would rather see a Conservative leader than a Labour one over the next five years, I don’t think they have done a very good job at all."
Eighteen-year-old Conservative Max Elliot, from Cheadle, has been looking forward to voting since the school help mock elections last year.
Max, who is hoping to become a barrister, said: "I’ve been brought up under New Labour and I think there are some quite detrimental effects as a result of that, and I think that it’s time for a change, as the Conservatives say.
"I would have been very upset if I hadn’t been old enough to vote because I am looking forward to seeing the Conservatives take control again. I do think that sometimes their policies aren’t very clear, and it would be nice to see exactly what their views are."
