BOLTON’S elections’ boss has urged the town’s residents to register to vote by the deadline of 11.59pm tonight.

Returning Officer Tony Oakman spoke out as the government reported a surge in young people applying to cast their ballot in the December 12 national poll.

His plea was echoed by candidates from the three main parties standing in the town’s Parliamentary constituencies.

It is understood that the surge in voter registration nationally has been repeated locally although Bolton Council was unable to provide figures for new applications so far since the General Election was announced at the end of last month.

Nearby Burnley has seen 398 new applications to vote since November 11 while marginal Pendle saw a spike in registrations after the ITV Leaders Debate on November 19 and another 240 on Sunday.

The government has reported a huge spike in applications to vote on Friday - especially among people.

Its figures for November 22 recorded a total of 308,000 registrations of which 103,243 were aged 25 to 34 and 102,768 were aged under 25.

This surge of younger voters could indicate problems for the Tories who’s voters are predominantly older according to data from the 2017 election when less than a quarter of voters between 18 and 29 supported them.

Two-thirds of Friday’s registrants were under 34 and for the whole of November that age group has made 65.5.per cent of registrations.

Since the start of 2019, 8.47million people have registered to vote in total.

Mr Oakman, said: “A General Election will be held on Thursday, December 12. In order to have your say and exercise your right to vote, it is important you are registered by midnight on November 26.”

Kevin Walsh, Liberal Democrat candidate in Bolton South-East where Labour had a majority of 13,126 in 2017, said: “This will be a really important General Election with Brexit and everything else going on. People should certainly vote and registering to do so is the first step."

Sir David Crausby, Labour candidate in Bolton North -East who had a majority of 3,797, said: “It is important that people in Bolton register to vote and have their say in who is their MP and who the government is.”

Chris Green, the Conservative candidate in Bolton West defending a majority of 936, said: “This is the most important election since the Second World War. Everybody should register to exercise their vote. It is easy to do online.”