The 2025 Union Elections have seen a 24 per cent turnout, making this the highest proportional turnout on union records.
2,455 individual students voted this year, marking a three per cent increase from last year.
From 2020 to 2022 voter numbers were falling, but 2025 marks the third consecutive year that voter percentage has increased.
A union spokesperson: “We are really pleased to see such a high turnout again, and with less candidates this year, it’s even more pleasing.
“Fantastic work from the candidates to engage students has been rewarded and we can’t wait to work with the new team next year”.
Despite this, nine out of the 14 Volunteer Officer positions have been left empty in this election.
The positions are: Co-Curricular Officer, International Officer, Media Officer, Sports Union Participation and Engagement Officer, Care Experienced Students Officer, Engagement Officer, Mature Students Officer, Parents and Carers Officer and finally Sports Union Communication Officer.
All of the Volunteer Officer positions were filled for 2024/25.
When Brig spoke to students about what mattered to them in this election, the most common answers involved housing, fees and prices of public transport.
The connective tissue of the issue seems to be the cost-of-living crisis as it has been hitting students especially hard.
Brig also asked students why they thought that student elections mattered to which students told us that they believed the elections were important to give students a voice as without a collective body like the union students will not be listened to.
However, students also stated that they had not voted as they found the union website difficult to navigate and that voting was not worth the hassle of dealing with the site.
Overall, this result suggests that while voter turnout has increased, the lack of interest in working within the union suggests that while knowledge about the elections may have improved the student body’s true engagement has not.
Still, this year’s University of Stirling Union voter turnout is comparatively higher than similar-sized universities such as Dundee, which saw a turn-out of only 13.4 per cent.
Across the U.K., there is a trend of low turnouts in student union elections, with universities rarely achieving a turnout rate above 20 per cent.
The University of Oxford reached a turnout of six per cent in 2024.
In the broader context of elections, Stirling’s increase in voters runs opposite to trends in the UK General Elections which have seen turnout fall to the lowest levels since the Second World War.
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