Britain’s Younger Generations Are Overwhelmingly Left-Wing

Does that mean the Tories are finished?

If you’re not a socialist when you’re young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re older, you have no brain.

Winston Churchill didn’t say this, though it’s often attributed to him.

The actual origins of the quote remain somewhat mysterious, but the sentiment has most certainly permeated our political discourse as a society.

The Left are viewed as soft and naive; the Right, cold and logical.

It’s no coincidence that these traits match up reasonably well with how we view different stages of life — young, open, naive — older, closed, hardened.

And so, when polls such as the recent one conducted by YouGov declare that Britain’s youth are overwhelmingly left-wing, one’s initial temptation is to shrug and start talking of bears, popes, woods and Catholicism.

Yet despite the seemingly near-tautologous nature of these results, the details are actual quite enlightening.

It’s tempting to see the headline figure of 600 seats for Labour as the big story.

It sort of is, but just as interesting, is the fact that the Tories would not win a single seat, even with 12% of the popular vote. Hoist by their own First Past the Post petard. It shows that there are no young Tory geographical strongholds — support is thinly spread throughout the map.

Of course, this is a fantasy electoral map, in that it only represents the views of one specific section of society.

But it does throw up some interesting questions.

We think the trend in previous generations has been from left to right as the electorate ages. Even if that is true, is there really going to be such a dramatic shift in political leaning as to redress such a huge imbalance between Tory and Labour support within this generation?

Add into the mix the views of the next age group up:

In the 24–49 age bracket, we’re talking 28% for Tories vs 49% for Labour.

Averaging that out, that’s over 50% of 18–49 year olds for Labour, and about 19% for Tories.

That’s fucking mental.

In order then for these current generation’s views to mirror those of the older generations, it would require a 50% swing to the right.

That means that 50% of the current 50ish% of 18–49 year olds who are left-wingers would need to do a complete about-face turn sometime in middle age.

It’s possible, sure, but it seems unlikely.

To work out just how likely, whether this is a new phenomenon or not, and therefore whether it signals the end of the Tories as we know it, I decided to analyse general election voting patterns in various generational permutations — because I’m fun at parties and have a life.

So, to begin this extremely unscientific study, which obviously doesn’t account for myriad factors such as economy, incumbent government, smaller party votes etc. and should only be used as a very broad sentiment guide— I decided to track the current generations who are now very pro-Tory — the 50–64 and 65+ groups, and see how those generations voted in the elections of their respective youth and middle age.

So for example, 50–64 would have been(ish) 18–32 in the 1987 election, and 65+ would have been (ish) the 33–50 bracket.

Data isn’t available for those specific age groups so I’m going for the closest approximation —

18–34

35–54

So how did those age groups vote in that election?

The 50–64 (18–34) vote was 38% Tories, 36% Labour

The 65+ (35–54) vote was 45% Tories, 30% Labour

The average of the two pretty much equates to the overall results of that GE — Tories 43%, Labour 32%.

Let’s skip forward a decade, to the New Labour landslide of 1997. How are these generations voting in that election?

Again, we’ll have to make some approximations so the current 50–64 generation becomes (25–44) and the current 65+ becomes (45–64).

50–64 (25–44) vote was 48% Labour, 28% Tories

65+ (45–64) vote was 40% Labour, 34% Tories

Again, the average of the two sectors mirrors the overall result — 44% Labour, 31% Tories.

Finally, the 2010 election, one of the tighter in recent memory.

50–64(35–44) 34% Tories, 30% Labour

65+ (55–64) 38% Tories, 28% Labour

The overall result in this election was 37% Tories to 30% Labour.

Right, so what does all this show?

Well firstly, it shows that the concept of a generation becoming more right wing as it ages is broadly false. Both generations voted in greater numbers for the Tories in 1987 than they did in 2010.

It also shows that there is some flexibility in political views — the 1997 election was a major swing towards the left (even if you don’t view New Labour as “proper” left).

But most of all, it proves the point that these recent poll results are big.

Because at no point did support for either party among these previous generations drop below 25% at any election, but nor did support for any party go above 50%.

Even if we were to counterbalance these polls somewhat and suggest that the extremes won’t bear out entirely in an actual election, we’re still looking at something like ~50% for Labour vs <20% for the Tories in these younger generations.

This is big. It’s unprecedented in 50 years of elections.

Now, I’m not going to stick my neck on the line and say the Tories are dead and dying. Things constantly change in politics.

But what I will say, is that based on these results, and comparing them to those of previous elections, if the Tories don’t do something dramatic; either rebrand the party enormously or rely on Labour to somehow shoot themselves in the face (both possible), they could be spent as an electoral force within the next two decades.

This ought to be a wake up call for the Conservatives. The younger generations no longer buy into their message. The party must evolve, or face oblivion.

It’s up to them whether they heed this warning.

Jackson Rawlings is a political philosopher, writer and thinker with some big ideas about how we can change the world for the better.