Is there an emerging political gulf between the generations?
I
John Quiggin has long been a sharp sceptic of generational analysis in politics. He recently published a mea-culpa, arguing that the situation has changed, and age now has a great deal more political significance than it used to.
What I found interesting about this was is his claim that age is of growing political significance, because it increasingly divides the way people vote. I guess I’d taken it for granted that age had always been a strong predictor of political tendencies- that it was always an important divide. However when I ran the numbers using historical exit polls it turned out that Quiggin is definitely correct, the role of age in politics has been growing in importance.
II
Here, for example, is the ratio of +55 year olds voting conservative versus 18–24 year olds voting conservative over a series of UK elections since 1978:
Meanwhile in the United States the relationship is a little bit different, but has also been growing recently (here we use 18–29 year olds over 60 years old or older):
So how to explain the transformation in the relationship between age and voting? Two plausiable theories come to mind, although both are just speculation:
Theory A: So called “culture war issues”, such as gay marriage, immigration and crime have become increasingly important, at the expense of “economic” issues such as welfare and wages. Cultural issues divide the generations much more sharply than economic issues.
I find this theory plausible, consider this research by Pew on views of Marijuana legalisation by age, the generational divide is clear and stark:
Similarly for same sex marriage there is a clear gap between the ages, even larger than the gap in voting preferences. See this by PRRI:
Whether these Culture War issues play a bigger part in determining votes than they once did is hard to say, but certainly it is a common sentiment that culture war issues matter more than they did in the past. If so, culture war may be driving these changes.
2. Class position, and perhaps perception of one’s class position, is increasingly correlated with age. Thus for class reasons the old vote right where the young vote left.
Certainly there’s some evidence for this though I doubt it’s the full story. Consider this graph, suggesting an overall trend of rising wealth inequality between ages. (I’ve lost the source for this graph, please let me know if you find it):
III
What are we to make of this? Firstly I’m interested to know whether or not those presently young will swing back to conservatism as they age, if not, the conservative side of politics is in trouble.
Secondly I can’t help but notice the implications of these trends for the perennially favourite topic of ‘who would win in a violent political conflict: the left or right?’. Such speculation has been intensifying for decades, began to ripen under Obama, and has gained a great deal of (frankly alarming) momentum during the present administration. Relative youth is a power factor that is not often considered in these debates, but if one ‘side’ has a large majority of fighting age citizens, that’s important. A less terrifying way this scenario might play out is that in a situation of heightened political enthusiasm and mass action, in which youth apathy and non-voting was less of a factor, the left might derive advantage because of the relative vigour of its supporters.
Relatedly, the rise in youth support for the left might be seen as evidence of rising youth dissatisfaction. Youth dissatisfaction generally is a precursor to political change and upheaval for many (mostly obvious) reasons. Certainly this is a trend to keep one’s eye on.
