The allegiance of students vote is generally most affected by changes to student finance, says the Higher Education Policy Institute. This time Labour could be the main beneficiary - but many students are not registered to vote, says HEPI.
The report says a new system, brought in since the last general election, means voters have to be registered individually, instead of by household. It says that creates a problem because students change address frequently.
It calls on local councils, universities and central government to help students overcome these "new bureaucratic hurdles".
The research, which tracked student voting patterns since 1997, says there was a surge to the Liberal Democrats in 2001, 2005 and 2010 because they promised to scrap tuition fees. But the trebling of fees in England by the coalition has damaged both Liberal Democrat and Conservative prospects among students, say the authors. They predict a student swing to Labour at the 2015 general election.
The report draws on figures from the British Election Study which suggest the proportion of students who would vote Liberal Democrat dropped from 44% in 2010 to 13% in early 2014.
Despite students making up only 3% of the population, they could affect the result in about 10 seats, particularly as the opinion polls are very close, it says.
Prof Stephen Fisher of Trinity College Oxford, who carried out the analysis, said it was "remarkable" the extent to which changes in the student vote had reflected party policies on student finance.
