Your problem in South Wales Central is that the region includes Cynon Valley and the Rhondda; both of which are dead zones for the Greenies. It’s not impossible, I suppose, but that fact makes it a little harder than you’re implying.

It looks like the Greens may pick up a couple of seats in the Scottish parliament which is good for them… but disappointingly for them, it seems that most of the former LD voters have switched to the SNP.

Still, Labour getting a good kicking in my homeland is good news!

Based on a larger sample (I would estimate about 4,000) YouGov have done an actual Local Council poll (among other things) with the full details here:

http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yg-archives-pol-sun-avlocalspk-040511.pdf

Adjusted for likelihood to vote it gives an estimate of 3% for the Greens in the election. The poll was only taken Tuesday evening/ Wednesday daytime so those plumping for the Greens should by now know if they actually have a Green candidate to vote for.

With regard to age, 7% of the 18-24′s say that they will vote Green, however there are some qualifications to be made. Firstly YouGov don’t have may 18-24′s on their panel, so those that they do have may be untypical and their responses are heavily weighted up.

Secondly there just aren’t very many in this age group compared to older groups and the majority of those that are, aren’t students. Also all those in the 18-24 group are more likely to be not registered to vote and if they are, less likely to actually do so.

So you may be right, but outside a few central wards in University towns, this doesn’t really matter. What you need is more Green grannies.

Tell me about it!
I helped organise a campaign for a fellow student running for the Greens in Canterbury.
A Tory safe seat, we saw the student vote soar and took 400 votes across the ward. We came within 180 votes of taking the seat from the Tories.
I think it may have been the first time a Green stood in the ward, and we’re hopeful future students will build on the result at the next elections.

Nathan,

The problem is that students are Green now, but we don’t know what the (different) students will be in four years time.

@ 5 Watchman

AFAIK, Students in general had been trending to the right over the last few years, but this has probably been blown wide open by the cuts controversy. Given that Lib Dems till now have been the student party of choice, I reckon Greens and Labour should both see gains in the 18-24 age bracket.

Chaise,

My guess is that this will be short-term – I don’t see tuition fees as a trend changer. What is pretty certain is that the cosy Social Democratic consensus amongst student political bodies (with the odd exception) seems to have been disturbed, although whether this has any real effects other than discomforting a few people is questionable.