UNIVERSITY students are around five times more likely to vote Labour or Tory at the General Election than they are Liberal Democrat, according to a poll published today.

It reveals that the two major parties are tied for support on the UK’s leading university campuses at 31 per cent.

But just six per cent of the 13,000-plus final-year undergraduates questioned said they plan to back the Lib Dems on May 7.

Students in the final year of a degree were the first to pay the higher, £9,000 maximum tuition fee introduced under the coalition Government in 2010 – months after the Lib Dems, led by Nick Clegg, whose Sheffield Hallam constituency has a high student population, campaigned on a pledge to oppose any hike.

More than half (53 per cent) of those polled said they would not vote for the Lib Dems because of the tuition fee increase.

The poll is published by High Fliers Research. Its director Martin Birchall said: “Our research not only confirms that first-time voters at the country’s top universities are set to vote for Labour and the Conservatives in almost equal numbers in the General Election, but that there has been a huge surge in support for the Green Party on campus, taking them to within just a few percentage points of the two leading parties.