Posted temporarily on the content manager's blog due to technical issues on our website, this is Horizons' first article in a three-part series investigating contemporary millennial voting behaviour.
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Most people will be familiar with the truism that young people tend to sit on the lift of the political spectrum, and gradually move right as they get older. So established is this idea that it has its own maxim - "Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head" - which has been attributed to Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli, Georges Clemenceau, Francois Guizot and more.
Statistics
from the British Election Study show that there is indeed some truth to this
generalisation. This graph plots voting trends by age in five elections within
the past 50 years.
Graph source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/do-we-become-more-conservative-with-age-young-old-politics
Indeed, the
voting habits of Millennials in recent elections and referenda across the West
have largely stayed true to form. 68% of 18-34 year olds voted Remain in the
British referendum on leaving the EU[1], whilst the vast majority of the Dutch
Green Party’s 7000 new members are under-30 years old[2]. The ‘Schulz Effect’ in Germany seems to
be seizing the support of a new surge of left-wing young voters ahead of the
upcoming federal elections and, across the Atlantic in November’s American
presidential election, 18-29 year olds favoured Clinton over Trump by a
decisive margin of 55%-37%[3]. This would appear ample evidence that
millennial voting behaviour is in-keeping with our expectations.
Efforts have
been made to explain this, although it is always difficult to rationalise
sociological habits on such a largescale. Initially, the possibility of voting
patterns depending on generation was considered; perhaps growing up in the more
liberal age of the post 1960s would imbue younger people with the social values
associated with the left?
This idea of
a generational determinant, however, was challenged by a 2014 investigation by
ScienceDirect[4]. Their findings revealed that voters in
the past 100 years have revealed similar yearly ageing effects, with a net move
to conservatism of 0.32-0.38% per annum. In other words, any category of voters
within the last century (such as 18-28 year olds) has become 0.32-0.38% “more
conservative” each year, regardless of whether they grew up in the post war
years, the 1960s or the 1990s.
More
compelling then is the explanation that it is the ageing process which endows
us with more conservative values. An existing combination of the most socially
liberal society the West has ever seen, and the highest number of young people
going to university, means that Western Millennials are, by in large, the most
socially enlightened generation in history. These values translate into a sense
of justice which makes them more inclined to agree with left-wing social policies
aimed at levelling the playing field, and hinged on a concern for all.
As we get
older, factors such as rising tax obligations, finding a house and supporting a
family can refocus our initially longsighted, morally ambitious horizons to a
nearer prioritisation of those we care for. Human propensity for looking to the
past with rose-tinted glasses also makes us more inclined to defend the status
quo, again posing a shift to a conservative mentality. Of course not all of
these issues, and in some cases none, affect all people, but movement along the
political spectrum so evident in the statistics suggests that this is a fair
interpretation of voting behaviour.
Despite the data
seen earlier, however, there are signs that contemporary Millennials are
upsetting this script. A 2015 YouGov article[5] noted that, whilst today’s students
remain socially liberal, their stance on economic matters is in fact to the
right of the general public. For example, 76% of the general public believe the
minimum wage to be too low, compared with only 74% of students surveyed. Across
the Channel, such a shift is being even more radically exposed by Marine Le
Pen’s quite extraordinary levels of support amongst the young; by some
estimates, her favourability is as much as 7 percentage points higher amongst
the under 30s than amongst the overall population[6]. (With the upcoming election, this runs
so starkly against the grain of current western European trends that Horizons
shall be investigating French Millennial voting behaviour in a separate
blog-piece soon).
Once again,
the story is similar in America. Although Clinton held on to the under-30 vote,
her victory dipped decisively from Obama’s over Romney in 2012 (60%-36%).
Accounting
for this in a plausible manner is a far harder task due to the lack of
consistency with other votes in Europe (look at Geert Wilders’ crashlanding in
the Dutch elections and Alternative for Germany’s disappointing result in the
Saarland state election). More significant to the risk in drawing overzealous
conclusions is that it is an ongoing event, precluding the benefit of hindsight
analysis, and so we do not yet know whether this is a momentary ‘blip’ or a
long-term redirection in millennial voting habits.
Nevertheless,
efforts are being made to explain modern political movements which may
elucidate the reasons behind this change. A recent article in Vox[7] argued that the upshot of the gradual
success of the welfare state system across Europe is that people are no longer
so concerned about their economic stability. As a result, they are free to
worry about other issues, for example immigration and national identity, which
ushers them in the direction of nationalist parties such as UKIP and Front
National. These parties’ lack of comprehensive, watertight economic policy does
not deter their growing support, which crucially suggests that this is of less
importance to supporters than their fortress-mentality nationalism.
Yet problems
arise in rationalising recent millennial voting behaviour solely along these
lines. Although the welfare system in Britain might give young people the
assurance of a safety net which did not exist 100 years ago, an inaccessible
housing market, rising student debts and real-term wage stagnation surely
provide ample room for economic concern. The same can be said for France with
its high unemployment rate. In this context, the suggestion that Millennials
endure less financial strain than before the financial crash simply does not
float.
This
correlation with the worldwide rise of populism, however, cannot be ignored. In
fact, compelling attention has been given to the implications of kickback
against globalisation by an increasing number of voices, including the writer
and environmentalist Paul Kingsnorth. He believes[8] globalisation – born in the 1980s and
propelled into the 21st Century as the proclaimed zenith of
capitalism – is seen by many as an abject failure in poverty alleviation.
Amidst runaway inequality, most people feel like they have not shared in the
benefits. So powerful is this sense of disillusionment that the traditional
division between the left and right is being replaced by that between
nationalism and globalism.
If this is
taken to be true, the implication is that people can now be socially liberal
and economically conservative, or the other way round. In extremis, Millennials
could simultaneously subscribe to rights for gays, gender equality and climate
change reducing measures, and at the same time favour a more defensive,
nationally-minded economy, wary of the international titans hoarding the
world’s wealth. What makes the ‘populism package’ so tractable in modern times
is that it can absorb traditionally contradictory stances into one,
anti-globalist front.
It is important not to get carried away with the impact of
this shift. As the YouGov article notes, “This doesn't mean they
[students/young people] tend to fall on the right-wing side of the debate, but
simply that they fall on the left-wing side to a lesser extent”. Young people
have still tended to the left in recent votes, but the signs are perhaps
showing that this can no longer be taken for granted. As the alleged merits of an international
‘super-economy’ continue failing to reduce student debt, guarantee a job with a
substantial salary or put a roof over heads, it remains to be seen whether
Millennials – especially those highly educated and living in cosmopolitan areas
- will start to trade in idealistic values for concerted action against this
system.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028
[4] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379413000875
[5] https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/18/students-profile/
[6] http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-france-election-fn-youths-idUKKBN16L139
[8] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/18/the-new-lie-of-the-land-what-future-for-environmentalism-in-the-age-of-trump
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