Could the young only knowing 'good times' derail the Conservatives?

An interesting (and potentially worrying) story in today's Metro is that a quarter of young urbanites have not yet made up their mind about who they are voting for. There are two ways of reading this, one of which could lead to Labour holding a lot more seats on election night than current polling indicates.

The first option is that this is no big deal - young people are usually the least partisan (or at least the least pro-Conservative), and they also vote much less reliably than older voters. Therefore, a large chunk of that quarter may just not be planning to vote. Think of the USA - where every election the young will drive the Democrats to victory, and every time the young fail to come out in proportion to older voters (even Obama failed to increase young voters as a percentage of voting population, although the absolute number of young voters did increase). So according to this there is no problem - if they haven't made up their mind, they probably won't vote, so the current numbers should remain steady.

The second option is possibly a very big deal - That young urbanites have never felt a real economic downturn before - let alone had to deal with falling government spending. And because they have never experienced it, they are less likely to understand what would happen to the country without major cuts in spending. Therefore, this 'don't know' could indicate that a large chunk of young people in urban centres (seats the Tories must win if they are to form a government) are unwilling to sign up to the necessary but unpleasant cuts the Conservatives are advocating - and could cast their vote for Labour as the 'nice' alternative.

I have no idea which of these two options is the cause of the number of 'don't knows' amongst young urbanites (although I lean towards the first option). Of course, there is always another option - that despite his efforts to appeal to the young, David Cameron is yet to seal the deal. Hopefully his conference speech today can convince some of these voters, and lay out exactly why people should vote FOR the Conservatives, rather than simply vote against Labour.