With a little over three weeks to go to the General Election, we have invited first-time voter, a 20-year-old student, to share her view on the main parties campaigns.
These are solely the views of the blogger and not the Daily Echo.

I’ve never really had much interest in politics, it all confuses me a bit and I don’t particularly have much trust in politicians and their empty promises. There definitely isn’t enough education surrounding politics, and it’s evident that the majority of young adults and university students, like me, are pretty clueless.

When the news spread that there was to be a General Election next month, I decided to swot up in order to use my vote wisely. I started with the idiot’s guide – wandering around Wikipedia – to get my head around the parties’ general ideologies, before looking into what they’re specifically offering.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is adamant that this isn’t a two-man race between Labour and the Tories, but it seems the Lib Dems still have far to go before coming out on top. I do tend to have a soft spot for the underdog, though.

I think we need a change to get our country out of this economical mess, but I don’t think Conservative is the way to move forward. The tax break they have proposed for married couples alone shows their typical traditionalist ideology. I feel this is a step backward on their part, favouring 2.4 families over couples who feel they don’t want or need to wed, as well as the large number of single-parent families. At least they include homosexual civil partnerships in this, I guess.

Clegg impressed me, and many other Twitter users it seems, in the way he handled the interview with Jeremy Paxman last night. Paxman is renowned for picking politicians to pieces, but Nick Clegg managed to stick to his guns and actually come out looking pretty good. His promise for the first £10,000 earned to be tax-free is likely to win many votes, and has certainly placed Lib Dems higher in my mind.

I’m looking forward to see if David Cameron and Gordon Brown can cope nearly as well under Paxman’s interrogation in the coming weeks. I’m pretty sceptical about this!