Young men aren't shifting right ...
... in Britain, and lots of English-speaking countries
One of the striking features of the racist riots in Britain has been the wide spread of ages among those (nearly all men) convicted so far[1]. This is unusual, since criminal violence of all kinds is most commonly associated with young men. And it’s a counter-example to what has become a standard talking point.
The belief that young men have shifted strongly to the right and far-right has become a background assumption for lots of political journalism. But there’s plenty of evidence that, in Britain and other English-speaking countries[2], both young men and young women are more likely to support left and centre-left parties. The recent UK election gives a striking example
The age gradient here is stunning. That probably reflects the division over Brexit a disaster inflicted on the young, primarily by nostalgic retirees (the vast majority of this group voted for Tories/Reform in 2024). If you squint you can see a slightly larger gender gap among young voters than in older cohorts. But, as is true elsewhere, this reflects a leftward shift among young women, rather than a move to the right by men.
The same pattern is evident in Australia and New Zealand, with a larger but still modest gender gap, once again driven by young women shifting left. As this lament frm a rightwing thinktank shows, the Greens are far ahead of the main conservative party among Gen Z voters.
In the US case, there are some surveys suggesting a sharp gender divide among the young, though results complicated (as always in the US) by race and by the chaos created by Trump and Trumpism. However, the evidence suggests that young women have moved left while young men have, on average, not moved much at all.
In all cases, other factors like income, education, rural/urban divides, religion and so on interact in complex ways with age and gender. And a lot of punditry reflects over-reaction to the swing of the electoral pendulum, which makes it easy to discern spurious trends in just about any group you want to look at.
All of this is in the context of (broadly) two-party systems. In European multi-party systems, the big issue has been the rise of support for far-right parties that mostly get around 20 per cent of the vote, and fluctuate a lot more. That’s hard to interpret, but there’s plenty to cast doubt on the idea that young voters, and particularly young men, have shifted to the right en masse. Here’s a thoughtful analysis of recent German elections, for example.
Overall, voting patterns in the English-speaking countries show an age gradient that is getting steadily steeper, along with a gradually increasing gender gap. The net result, in most cases has been a modest shift to the left among young men, and a much sharper shift among young women.
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fn1. The Jan 6 insurrection showed something similar.
fn2. Here, I’m not considering former colonies where English is widely spoken but not the dominant first language, such as India and South Africa. The politics of these countries can’t easily be fitted into the framework used here.
I now make a point of not reading political journalists. A lot of things are “opinions” including advice you receive from a medical specialist or barrister. The difference is they have a significant body of research behind them. Political journalists such write things based on their own biases and observations. I was reading an opinion piece in the NYT, by that Cohn bloke, and I was thinking what do you to support this? Even opinion polls irk me. What can they tell us other than what a group of people think at a given movement in time? Aren’t they wholly dependent on the question asked? Accordingly I don’t waste my time reading political commentary.
About a third of young French voters (32%) voted for Le Pen's far right National Rally at the last French election but even more voted for the far left. Interestingly, slightly less over 70s (29%) voted for National Rally, who had their biggest support in the 50-69 age group.
As the Muslim population grows in Western Europe, and Islamist terrorism grows along with it, I suspect young indigenous Europeans will increasingly move to the far right and also the far left, as they are already doing in France, which already has a large Muslim minority. The centre left and centre right will be obliterated. Europe has no future as extremism and ethno-religious tensions will eventually result in failed states that look like Lebanon.
I thank my parents for immigrating to Australia, where "Stop the Boats" and better managed multiculturalism means we have a chance to avoid Europe's decline and fall!