Cambridge residents will head to the polls today, as local elections open up competition for 15 seats on Cambridge city council. In the run-up to voting, student canvassing activity has heated up in an effort to attract crucial votes from Cambridge’s sizeable student population.

“What we see a lot is students being very political, having strong opinions, but forgetting to register to vote or actually going out to vote”, said Lara Parizotto, campaigns and constituency Labour party liaison officer for the Cambridge Universities Labour Club (CULC).

Gabriel Barton-Singer, chair of Cambridge University Liberal Association (CULA), echoed a similar sense of frustration with low levels of student engagement. He said that it was the case partly “because some students are not registered to vote here”, but added, “JCRs have not been quite as good with getting people to register as with the general elections.”

Speaking to CULC canvassers at Sidgwick site on Monday, Labour Member of European Parliament Alex Mayer remarked that there was less “excitement” surrounding these elections when compared to last year’s general elections. However, Mayer noted that “if you’re in your first or second year, you’ll be in Cambridge for a while to come. So I think it’s really important to think about who you want to be your local representatives.”

Considering Labour’s current majority of 25 out of 42 seats on the Cambridge city council, Newnham ward Labour candidate Mike Davey said that he felt “optimistic,” arguing that “students tend to be more open to a Labour message”.

Canvassing directly towards students is critical for certain council seats, but can prove challenging. Speaking to Varsity, CULC Socials Officer Ben Margolis noted: “It’s more difficult in wards like Newnham, where it’s something between 40% to 60% students and we can’t canvas inside colleges. You can’t actually knock on people’s doors, so it is difficult to get people out to the polls and also to get people to register to vote.”

Barton-Singer did, however, remark that while student engagement has been less than satisfactory in the lead-up to elections, campaigning engagement has been very positive. “With about two hours’ notice, on Saturday we sent out a thing to say we were campaigning from four and tons of people showed up, so we are happy. We have got campaigners, but we have not got so many voters.”

The Liberal Democrats currently hold the second most number of seats on the council. Barton-Singer said that that while the town of Cambridge tends to be “quite solid” for the Liberal Democrats, the University is decidedly less so.

Many of the CULC students canvassing said that they enjoyed shifting their focus from the University of Cambridge to the town as a whole. “You can feel that when you never leave the Sidgwick site, your problems are isolated from the rest of the community, when actually a lot of the things we face as students are also faced by residents,” said CULC Secretary Katie Clark. CULC LGBT+ Officer Sara Borasio agreed: “I think that in Cambridge you get into a ‘student bubble’ really quickly.”

Overall, Barton-Singer said that he felt “cautiously optimistic” about Liberal Democrats’ chances. He emphasised voter interest in tackling rough sleeping, a focal point of the party’s campaign: “I think residents really feel that is a priority and something that really needs to be done.”

Both CULC and CULA will continue campaigning today as residents begin to vote. Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA) will begin its canvassing efforts today.

Four University of Cambridge students are also running for seats on the Cambridge city council. Connor MacDonald, Dylan Coll-Reed, and Henry Mitson are running for Conservative party seats in the Newnham, Arbury, and Market wards respectively, while Anthony Martinelli is running for Market ward as a Liberal Democrat.

Polls are open across the city between 7am and 10pm. Varsity will also be covering tonight’s vote count, bringing you live results.