Polling by The Cheese Grater has revealed that the Students’ Union’s ever-lasting apathy crisis may be worsening — with a notable uptick in respondents saying they did not know or care about the elections.
The Cheese Grater asked 228 students, 62% more than the inaugural opinion poll in 2025. The results were clear to see: no one bloody cares about the SU.
1 in 3 didn’t even know they were happening
The first question in the poll asked whether students were aware of the leadership race happening. 32.5% responded “no”, more than double the 15.7% who said “no” in 2025. Considering the fact that the poll this year had a larger sample size and thus may be more accurate, it is certainly a figure to raise an eyebrow at.
More students won’t be voting at all
Perhaps more damning is the nearly three-fold increase in the number of students who responded that they do not intend to vote at all in the elections. Could this be signs of disillusion with student politics?
Nobody knows what the SU does
It seems the weekly newsletters have not been enough to get students to know the sabbatical officers better, with a greater proportion of respondents saying they either don’t know the jobs of the sabbs either at all or very well. While the shifts are within margin of error, it has nonetheless at best not improved at all.
Student officer visibility similarly seems as big an issue as it was this time last year. Last year 89.3% responded that they either did not know at all or not very well what the 15 student officers did. This year that figure was 85.5% — a figure well within margin of error of last year.
Approval up… from 0%
In an improvement since last year’s net-approval rating of 0%, it can be revealed that the sabbs this year scored a net approval rating of 7.4%. This was, however, amidst an increase in the share of respondents who did not have an opinion on the sabbs, from 54.3% to 66.2%.
Remain in the lead (for once)
The Cheese Grater also polled about the upcoming referendum on the SU’s membership in the National Union of Students. Although predictably dominated by those who didn’t care, amongst those who did have an opinion, remain led overwhelmingly over leave.
Cost of living remains top priority
Similarly to last year, cost of living was listed as the top priority amongst voters, with 44.7% of respondents naming it as one of their priorities. This was followed by funding for clubs and societies at 43.9%, mental wellbeing at 32.5%, and equity and inclusion at 29.8%. The top four remained the same as 2025.
Apathy remains the winner, by far
If there is one thing this poll has shown, it is that apathy towards the SU has not only remained the top takeaway, but it has seemingly grown. Even considering margins of error and sampling methods, it is hard to ignore the glaring issues with students overwhelmingly responding that they either do not care or do not know, to every question.
In fact, “don’t know” won every single approval question bar one, which was the question on SU approval at large. The Union has spent much time this year in zones discussing how they could boost student engagement; have they simply hit saturation, or is there something deeper behind this apathy? Last year The Cheese Grater for the first time presented the severity and scale of the apathy crisis through real figures. This year, problems seem to have deepened.
How we did our polling
Field work was conducted between 2 March and 10 March, surveying 228 UCL students from all backgrounds. Readers may remember seeing one of the more than 150 posters that we put up across campus, one of our reporters being (fake) tortured for a reel promoting the poll, or one of our committed reporters (likely Comet) approaching UCL students across SU bars for the poll.
What we managed to yield was a far larger sample size than last year, lowering our margin of error (95% confidence interval ) to 6.6% — not very far off the pollster industry standard of 5%. This year’s polling can, with near certainty, be said to be more reliable than last year’s. Not only did we have a larger sample size, but we managed to have greater representation of non-humanities students; one of the issues we had last year.
While similar issues remain, especially in terms of skew towards high-propensity voters, we are confident that this poll is a decent portrayal of the macro-level issues the Students’ Union faces, most notably apathy. Given our expected biases towards engaged voters, the issue of apathy, if anything, is more likely to be worse than the results of this poll shows.
Additional reporting by Comet Musgrove.