The professor friend of mine pointed me to an interesting phenomenon earlier in the week. He shared with me a Twitter feed of British academic Matthew Goodwin who did a bit of demographic analysis ahead of the UK poll on June 8. In it, it becomes glaringly apparent that young voters are firmly in the camp of the political progressives. In the UK, it is meant to be Labour, as unbelievable as that sounds.
According to the latest ICM poll, among the 18-24 year olds Labour voters outclass their Conservative counterparts by 73% to 15%! On the flip side, in the 65+ year bracket Conservatives hold a decisive lead over Labour by 64% to 20%. Even in between, the 25-34 year olds have a very decent Labour majority by 43% to 34%, while in the 35-64 year bracket Conservative lead Labour by a similar margin.
As has been stated a million times in this space, demographics in destiny. Basically, the mature and older people are firmly in the Conservative camp, while the younger generation is literally screaming for Labour and one Jeremy Corbin. As incredible as this sounds, and bar the obvious potential of voters changing their political views as they grow up, the future generation is betting on the Labour leader to do a better job as prime minister.
If it were a unique constellation, you could always smile at the Brits and move on. But curiously, this seems to be a common trend, at least in the Western world. As the professor highlights, Bernie Sanders led Hillary Clinton by 7 or even 8 to 1 among young people. I vividly recall one of the Feel-the-Bern rallies on Washington Square in Manhattan last year. The distinct majority of participants were youngsters and teamster.
It is similar to what we have seen in the French presidential election. Among young voters the leader of the far-left, Jean-Luc Melenchon, was by far the most popular candidate, being the star of his huge Trump-like rallies and commanding 50%+ support in some of the polls, while the remainder was split between the other 10 or so candidates. Emmanuel Macron, for example, wasn’t even close to Melenchon in any of the polls.
So what does it all mean? Have we accidentally raised a generation of potentially hard-core Socialists to succeed us? Has capitalism been so disappointing and disillusioning in the wake of the financial crisis that, as a result the young people are flocking toward the Left en masse. Is the prospect for these voters, whether in the labour market or socially, so dire that they are clinging to the old utopian model?
There has got to be grains of truth in there somewhere. It is a cry of helplessness in light of the preceding generations basically having managed to live on credit and running up historically unprecedented debt levels. It almost feels like a me-too attitude that a government as the keeper of its citizens is being entrusted to provide. As the world is going against a concrete wall of debt, the youngsters may think accelerating one more time could work.
And in that context, it should not surprise us that this generation is turning away from the establishment that has ruled the Western world undisputed for so long, having provided well for their fathers and mothers. The young folks do not trust them. They are making a hard and clear distinction between Hillary’s Democrats and Bernie’s, Tony Blair’s Labour and today’s, or Francois Hollande’s Left and Melenchon’s.
There may not be a truly convincing analysis and explanation yet, but the fact remains this has built itself into a very visible trend in the West, and it reaches across borders. God knows what it could do to our societies in the medium- to longer-run, if it were to endure.
