What is really going on in politics? Get our daily email briefing straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Theresa May might not be Prime Minister if 16 and 17-year-olds had been able to vote at the last election.

The PM has to rely on the votes of 10 Democratic Unionist Party ( DUP ) MPs in Northern Ireland to get her agenda through Parliament.

But new Mirror modelling of the 2017 election shows that if 16 and 17-year-olds were able to vote, Labour would probably have gained seven seats from the Conservatives - enough to cancel out the DUP vote.

Labour MP, Jim McMahon, introduced a bill to lower the voting age in Parliament that was debated today.

It fell without a vote in a farcical House of Commons fight, with furious Labour MPs shouting "shame!" as they claimed Tory tactics had killed it off.

Today's debate was so angry that the Deputy Speaker had to cut in and shout: "This is not a football match!"

(Image: REUTERS)

Labour, allies and Tory ex-Chancellor George Osborne had all joined a campaign to lower the voting age, to get young people into democracy.

But Tories - who would likely see their vote share shrink - fought it, claiming 16-year-olds don't have "the political knowledge or maturity required."

And our model shows why they fought tooth and nail against ir.

It used data from the Office for National Statistics to get estimates for how many potential extra young voters there were in each constituency in England and Wales.

YouGov asked more than 50,000 people how they voted after this year’s election and found that 66 per cent of 18 and 19-year-olds voted Labour across Britain.

YouGov, which accurately predicted a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest party, also found that 57 per cent of this age group turned out to vote.

(Image: Getty) (Image: Getty)

If we assume the same numbers for 16 and 17-year-olds, that would mean an extra 443,000 votes for Labour compared to just 128,000 for the Tories.

This would be enough to change Southampton Itchen, Thurrock, Chipping Barnet, Hastings and Rye, Pudsey, Preseli Pembrokeshire and Calder Valley from blue to red.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd would have lost her seat in Hastings and Rye according to our model.

This would have meant the Tories and DUP combined wouldn’t have a majority in the House of Commons.

Another nine Conservative MPs would have seen their majorities slashed by at least 50 per cent.

Our model only looked at England and Wales because we don’t have accurate data on how young people in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted.

Seats to change hands

No. / Seat / MP

1 / Southampton, Itchen / Royston Smith

2 / Thurrock / Jacqueline Doyle-Price

3 / Chipping Barnet / Theresa Villiers

4 / Hastings and Rye / Amber Rudd

5 / Pudsey / Stuart James Andrew

6 / Preseli Pembrokeshire / Stephen Crabb

7 / Calder Valley / Craig Whittaker