Young people in Europe and the centre-right's existential crisis

[parochial boy]

Something we have touched on about here before, but never really explicitely and often through the context of, for example, Corbyn's popularity with young voters in the UK; or M5S's with younger voters in Italy is the degree to which the traditional centre right parties are performing badly with younger voters across the continent. Of course, the context is different in each country, but there does seem to be a pattern of those parties really struggling with young voters, to the point where they could be in real trouble, far more so than the parties of the left, in the near future. Not that this is a surprise, but it does seem to add a further element to the suggestion that it isn't necessarily the left that is facing the biggest crisis.

Anyway, to show this, I've compared the voting behaviour of young voters (generally up to 25/30) in a few European countries compared to the country as a whole - generally splitting up the vote into three blocs: the left, Centre/centre-right (ie the traditional centrist and moderate right parties) and populist/populist right (including M5S in here). Generally I have exlucded the more debatable/ones that dont easily fit into any bloc (like the Dutch CU or Piu Europa).

A lot of the numbers are probably off, because I have used the easiest number to hand and have poor internetting skills, but whatever.

UK 2017
Youth
Left - 62% (Lab, Greens)
Centre/Right - 32% (Tories, Lib Dems)
Populist Right - 2% (UKIP)

Total
Left - 42%
Centre/Right - 50%
Populist Right - 2%

Ratio of the youth vote to the entire electorate
Left - 148%(ie the left-wing youth vote was 148% of the total left wing vote)
Centre/Right - 64%
Populist Right - 100%

Switzerland 2015
Youth
Left - 33% (PS, Greens)
Centre/Right - 26% (PLR, PDC, PBD)
Populist Right - 25% (UDC)

Total
Left - 26%
Centre/Right - 32%
Populist Right - 29%

Ratio of the youth vote to the entire electorate
Left - 127%
Centre/Right - 81%
Populist Right - 85%

France 2017
Youth
Left - 37% (FI, PS)
Centre/Right - 35% (LREM, LR)
Populist Right - 21% (FN)

Total
Left - 26%
Centre/Right - 44%
Populist Right - 21%

Ratio of the youth vote to the entire electorate
Left - 142%
Centre/Right - 79%
Populist Right - 100%

Germany 2017
Youth
Left - 42% (SPD, Linke, Greens)
Centre/Right - 37% (CDU/CSU, FDP)
Populist Right - 11% (AFD)

Total
Left - 39%
Centre/Right - 44%
Populist Right - 14%

Ratio of the youth vote to the entire electorate
Left - 108%
Centre/Right - 84%
Populist Right - 85%

Netherlands 2017
Youth
Left - 27% (GL, SP, PvdD,PvdA)
Centre/Right - 46% (VVD, CDA, D66)
Populist Right - 14% (PVV, FVL)
note that these numbers could be a load of crap, I couldn't find anything that included crosstabs for PvdD and FVL, so assumed they did as well with younger voters as with the public at large, which probably means I have underestimated both of them

Total
Left - 28%
Centre/Right - 46%
Populist Right - 15%

Ratio of the youth vote to the entire electorate
Left - 100%
Centre/Right - 93%
Populist Right - 100%

This is actually remarkably similar, but hides a lot of differences within each of the "blocs" (ie much higher youth vote for GL and D66 - both of which could arguably count as a vote against traditional parties).

Italy 2018
Youth
Left - 20% (PD, LeU)
Centre/Right - 16% (FI and the rest of the Centrodestra aliance)
Populist Right - 53% (Lega, M5S)
note that these numbers could be a load of crap, I couldn't find anything that included crosstabs for PvdD and FVL, so assumed they did as well with younger voters as with the public at large, which probably means I have underestimated both of them

Total
Left - 23%
Centre/Right - 20%
Populist Right - 50%

Ratio of the youth vote to the entire electorate
Left - 87%
Centre/Right - 80%
Populist Right - 106%

Anyway, if anyone has corrections I am all ears - but the pattern seems clear, the populists and the left do inconsistently better or worse across the continent; but the traditional parties of the centre and centre right do worse, often considerably so.

[Lechasseur]

This is interesting.

How I interpret these results is that in the UK the young are very left wing and thus the Tories (just like every Anglosphere right wing party) are in serious trouble, as the Anglosphere youth are very left wing in general (I noticed that that's really the case compared to continental Europe).

While in Continental Europe I really don't believe that the youth are really left wing (at least in France) or against the right in general, I think what is happening on the continent is that the youth are rejecting the centre, they're either populist left or populist right now to a large degree.

I'm not sure what explains this difference though.

[palandio]

Germany
CDU/CSU vote:
Year; 18-24 vote; total vote:
1972: 35.3%; 44.6%;
1976: 40.2%; 48.0%;
1980: 34.4%; 44.0%;
1983: 41.2%; 48.5%;
1987: 36.0%; 43.8%;
1990: 35.6%; 43.4%;

1994, 1998: No data;

2001: 32.0%; 38.5%;
2005: 26.4%; 35.2%;
2009: 26.1%; 33.8%;
2013: 31.6%; 41.5%;
2017: 25.0%; 32.9%.

So in Germany the existential crisis of CDU/CSU has been a thing since 1968, although maybe slightly less pronounced than now. That's fifty years. CDU/CSU should be dead twice by now, but somehow they aren't.

I know of people who became more left-wing by age. Most didn't. Often the tendency is the other way round. People get a permanent position, they start a family and stability becomes a higher priority for them. I don't say that this is a natural law. Winning over voters from other parties is difficult. But conservative parties have managed to do it in the past and there is good reason to believe that they will manage to do it in future.

[Strudelcutie4427]

This is nothing new. As Winston Churchill said like 80 years ago, if youre 20 and not a socialist you dont have a heart, if youre 50 and still a socialist, you dont have a brain. People lean further right as they age

[parochial boy]

Germany
CDU/CSU vote:
Year; 18-24 vote; total vote:
1972: 35.3%; 44.6%;
1976: 40.2%; 48.0%;
1980: 34.4%; 44.0%;
1983: 41.2%; 48.5%;
1987: 36.0%; 43.8%;
1990: 35.6%; 43.4%;

1994, 1998: No data;

2001: 32.0%; 38.5%;
2005: 26.4%; 35.2%;
2009: 26.1%; 33.8%;
2013: 31.6%; 41.5%;
2017: 25.0%; 32.9%.

So in Germany the existential crisis of CDU/CSU has been a thing since 1968, although maybe slightly less pronounced than now. That's fifty years. CDU/CSU should be dead twice by now, but somehow they aren't.

I know of people who became more left-wing by age. Most didn't. Often the tendency is the other way round. People get a permanent position, they start a family and stability becomes a higher priority for them. I don't say that this is a natural law. Winning over voters from other parties is difficult. But conservative parties have managed to do it in the past and there is good reason to believe that they will manage to do it in future.

True, and don't get me wrong, I used the phrase "existential crisis" as a little reaction to the way people talk about the left. I don't for a second think that the CDU or Conservative party are going to fizzle out of existence any time soon (although I am far less confident about the Swiss PDC's survival chances, for example).

But having said that, support for the CDU has clearly declined over time hasn't it? in the 70s/80s they were consistently in the mid-40s, and since the start of the century they have gone over 40% once - and that is even with the electoral machine that is Merkel.

So if youth support has dropped by 10 or so points over the last 30-40 years, it doesn't seem completely out there to suggest this might be reflected in a further decline in CDU/CSU vote which could leave them struggling to consistently hit 30% in the not too distant future.

What was the FDP vote looking like throughout that era out of curiosity?

[palandio]

Page 17 and 18 in
https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/dam/jcr/e0d2b01f-32ff-40f0-ba9f-50b5f761bb22/btw17_heft4.pdf

You are of course right that CDU/CSU support has dropped, which is not surprising in an increasingly fragmented party system (by German standards). And I cannot exclude that the CDU/CSU will at some point do a Democrazia Cristiana or (less dramatic) a Dutch CDA, with other parties (partially) replacing them as the moderate conservative option.

You are also right that there is a lot of fuss about the crisis of European social democratic parties in particular and the crisis of the European center-left in general, while the constant demographic challenge which the European center-right faces, is largely ignored. So you are absolutely right to bring this up.

At the same time I found it important to give a counterpoint, because on the surface your arguments resemble one that you hear all the time on the American (center-)Left:
Young people and growing demographics (in particular minorities) are favoring the Left and that is why on the long run the conservatives are doomed. And that is not true in my opinion.

[mvd10]

It's hard to place D66 in the Dutch spectrum. Quite a large amount of young D66 voters are to the left of the current party leadership, but since they're not voting GL (whose leader theoretically should uniquely appeal to left-wing university youth) they're probably not that left-wing. I believe the centre-right VVD slightly underperformed with young voters in 2017, but they slightly overperformed with young voters in 2012 and earlier elections. In 2012 and 2010 the VVD overperformed with young voters while Labour (#2 party)  underperformed with them. But other right-wing parties (CDA and PVV) underperform with young voters while centrist/left-liberal D66 and left-wing GreenLeft severely overperform with young voters.

But I think the existential crisis of the right is mainly a problem in Anglosphere countries where high student debts play an important role. Heck, I believe the Dutch national election study showed that young voters actually were more fiscally conservative/'neoliberal' than older voters. Maybe young voters also are much more turned off by corruption? PP did horrible among young voters and they are dogged by corruption accusations (like Fillon in France who won 8% of under-25s).

Now that I think of it, it seems that young voters in countries where things are going well and they don't have many worries about student debts, high rents or unemployment are more inclined to vote for the centre-right. Just look at how the centre-right did in Anglosphere countries (high inequality, high tuition) or France/Spain (terrible economy) and compare it to how they did in Germany or the Netherlands (I'm referring to the centre-right now, which doesn't include centrists like D66 or 2017 campaign LREM). The German or Dutch centre-right still slightly underperformed, but they didn't do as bad with young voters as Fillon, Rajoy or May.

But that brings us to the problem that it's hard to compare right-wing parties across Europe. I imagine parties like the VVD (liberal on ethical/religious issues) or Merkel's CDU (some #woke aspects) appeal more to young voters than a rather authoritorian and traditional social conservative like Fillon (who also happens to be corrupt).

[Mike88]

In Portugal, Exit polls don't publish crosstabs by age or gender, but opinion polls before election day normally have number by age, gender and others. In the ERC site, in polls from 2009 until now, i choose those which were closer to the actual election results. They were: 2015 - Católica polls; 2014 - Eurosondagem polls; 2011 - Marktest polls; 2009 - Marktest polls.

The results, young voters vs the overall poll numbers, were the following:

Note: in 2009 and 2011, PSD and CDS ran separately, but their numbers are added here.

2015 gen. elections (Young voters: 18-24)
41% PSD+CDS
25% PS
19% BE
  3% CDU

2015 gen. elections (Overall poll result)
38% PSD+CDS
32% PS
  9% BE
  9% CDU

2014 European elections (Young voters: 18-30)
36.5% PS
31.6% PSD+CDS
  7.6% BE
  6.9% CDU

2014 European elections (Overall poll result)
36.9% PS
29.7% PSD+CDS
12.5% CDU
  5.7% BE

2011 gen. elections (Young voters: 18-24)
48.3% PSD+CDS
25.2% PS
  8.4% CDU
  6.2% BE

2011 gen. elections (Overall poll result)
48.2% PSD+CDS
30.1% PS
  8.5% CDU
  4.5% BE

2009 gen. elections (Young voters: 18-24)
42.2% PS
34.8% PSD+CDS
  8.1% BE
  7.1% CDU

2009 gen. elections (Overall poll result)
40.0% PS
39.8% PSD+CDS
  9.0% BE
  7.2% CDU

According to the polls, and these are polls not exit polls, with the exception of 2009, the Portuguese youth electorate seems to be more center-right compared to the rest of the age groups and the vote overall. Interesting.

[palandio]

When I try to look at the birth years and their CDU/CSU support over time, it really seems to confirm parochial boy's point:

Each group has its CDU/CSU corridor and the CDU/CSU moves inside the corridor in parallel with the other groups. There seems to be no structural movement upwards or downwards. For example the 1935-1945 born have always been voting 40-50% CDU/CSU, while the 1950-1975 have always been voting 30-40% CDU/CSU, later generations even slightly less. The short-term shifts are pretty uniform and the general slight downward trend is really due to younger generations voting less CDU/CSU, an effect that is not, as I thought it could be, mitigated by the CDU/CSU attracting more voters when they become older. (But maybe that's also caused by being there more parties in general.)

[DC Al Fine]

I find it interesting that economic conditions don't seem to affect the ratio of youth to elderly support for the centre right. One would think Germany's youth would have better prospects and therefore higher support for the centre right as a ratio of the population at large compared to Italian youth but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Oryxslayer]

The interesting thing is what the impact on the Social Democratic parties on the continent will be. Younger voters as a whole tend to prefer outsider parties - Greens, Far-Left, Liberatarian/Moderate Right, Populist Right, etc. As they grow older, these views have tended to stick a little bit, even as the natural wages/issues demanded shifts thrse voters towards the bigger parties. In most of Europe, the Right has seen this movement and moved fast to capture the middle and professional classes, leaving the fringe parties with the young, and the left with their loyal Union/elderly base. This means the Right doesn't need to youth right now...but the big left parties do. Badly.

[parochial boy]

Yeah, looking at those Portugal numbers, the other really big outlier seems to be BE - which would support the point that the real trend is away from the traditional/moderate/established parties towards radical alternatives. And not always left ones at that, cases in point being M5S in Italy or Jobbik in Hungary (I don't have the numbers to hand, but I vaguely recall someone posting them).

That really explains Italy too, where you have a multitude of factors including the relative weakness of the traditional right (as I defined them..), as well as M5S and the PD being, well being about as "establishment" as you possibly could be.

But I guess the point stays, the Soc Dem parties seem to have already gone through the loss of support that could be just round the corner for the old Liberal and Christian Democratic ones, and that could wind up being a big factor in European politics in the near future.

[Hifly]

All the evidence points that with only the exception of the UK, the traditional centre-left has a much greater existential crisis with young voters in Europe. The centre-left receives, in general, the lowest proportional vote share with young voters compared to other age groups.
In Germany, the substance of the Left's performance among young voters comes from a strong Green Party; Linke and SPD are weakest among this demographic.

[palandio]

@Hifly: Your claims are not completely supported by the representative electoral statistics which for 2017 give:

Party: share of total vote; share of age 18-24 vote; share of 25-34 vote;
CDU: 26.8; 19.9; 21,4;
SPD: 20.5; 18.4; 17.1;
Linke: 9.2; 10.5; 10.9;
Greens: 8.9; 14.6; 11.1;
CSU: 6.2; 5.1; 5.4;
FDP: 10.7; 13.2; 11.4;
AfD: 12.6; 8.0; 12.8;
Others: 5.0; 10.4; 9.8.

So yes, the SPD has problems with the youth vote, but less than CDU/CSU. The Linke on the other hand, is now stronger among the youngest voters than on average, differently from past elections.

[Former President tack50]

For Spain, I had to use the post-electoral CIS polls. Not sure if they are the most reliable but anyways. They also only have age crosstabs available since the 2000 election.

Total in the sample; share of 18-24

PP

2016: 23.3; 15.4
2015: 21.8; 11.6
2011: 37.5; 39.3
2008: 27.1; 27.8
2004: 25.3; 18.9
2000: 40.4; 38.2

So it seems that at least for PP, young people seemed to vote for them only slightly less than the general population with the exception of the infamous 2004 campaign (why young people flipped so hard then, I don't know). However during the 1st Rajoy government, the young PP voter percentage went off a cliff.

To be honest I thought PP would perform much worse among the young, I thought ZP won because of young voters.

Seems like for the right at large the picture is better though:

Cs /UPyD

2016: 10.1; 12.0
2015: 12.3; 17.6
2011: 5.0; 6.4
2008: 1.9; 1.0

So I'd say it's not that young people have become more left wing, still just as many young Spanish conservatives as there used to be. It's just that they've moved from PP to Cs.

[TheSaint250]

Interesting how in all of those countries with the exception of the UK the center-right and populist right combined are ahead of the left.

[Tender Branson]

Austria Parliament 2017:

* vote by age
* vote by gender + age
* vote by gender

Actual election results:

31.5% ÖVP
26.9% SPÖ
26.0% FPÖ
  5.3% NEOS
  4.4% LiPi
  3.8% Greens

http://wahl17.bmi.gv.at

[darklordoftech]

This is interesting.

How I interpret these results is that in the UK the young are very left wing and thus the Tories (just like every Anglosphere right wing party) are in serious trouble, as the Anglosphere youth are very left wing in general (I noticed that that's really the case compared to continental Europe).

While in Continental Europe I really don't believe that the youth are really left wing (at least in France) or against the right in general, I think what is happening on the continent is that the youth are rejecting the centre, they're either populist left or populist right now to a large degree.

I'm not sure what explains this difference though.

Maybe Anglosphere voters associate Christian politics, government surveillance, and war with right-wing politics while Continental European voters associate those things with Anglosphere culture in general.

[parochial boy]

All the evidence points that with only the exception of the UK, the traditional centre-left has a much greater existential crisis with young voters in Europe. The centre-left receives, in general, the lowest proportional vote share with young voters compared to other age groups.
In Germany, the substance of the Left's performance among young voters comes from a strong Green Party; Linke and SPD are weakest among this demographic.

That's not really relevant to the point though. The point is that, while SocDem parties are doing badly across Europe, they aren't everywhere (not in the UK or Switzerland, and barely even relevant in France or the Netherlands where the largestleft wing party at the last election did better with younger voters). That is even more so of the broader left, which often does well wherever you look at.

In contrast, so far we only have one country, Portugal, where the traditional centre-right is doing above average with younger voters (the pont of this isn't "oh look at how the left are doign", seeing as in a lot of instances, it is far right parties gaining the most from young voter disillusionment).

@Hifly: Your claims are not completely supported by the representative electoral statistics which for 2017 give:

Party: share of total vote; share of age 18-24 vote; share of 25-34 vote;
CDU: 26.8; 19.9; 21,4;
SPD: 20.5; 18.4; 17.1;
Linke: 9.2; 10.5; 10.9;
Greens: 8.9; 14.6; 11.1;
CSU: 6.2; 5.1; 5.4;
FDP: 10.7; 13.2; 11.4;
AfD: 12.6; 8.0; 12.8;
Others: 5.0; 10.4; 9.8.

So yes, the SPD has problems with the youth vote, but less than CDU/CSU. The Linke on the other hand, is now stronger among the youngest voters than on average, differently from past elections.

Purely speculative, but I imagine the age profile of Linke voters is quite different depending on which side of the iron curtain you are.

[DC Al Fine]

Any numbers for former Eastern bloc countries? I'd guess the centre right is doing better with young people there. Socialism is considered old man politics there, no?

[DavidB.]

In some countries, like Germany, the share of the vote for the main center-right party declines over time, but the total share of the right clearly doesn't if you add FDP and AfD. (A similar pattern exists on the left, with SocDems performing badly among youth in many countries, such as the Netherlands and Finland, but Greens performing well.)

I also suspect young voters used to be a lot more on the left in the past than nowadays. If this is something that has always existed, perhaps even more so than is now the case, it's not an "existential crisis".

Apart from that, the center-right by definition represents the economic status-quo. It makes sense that people would only start voting for them when they are "settled" with a career, a steady relationship, a house (often with mortgage), etc.

According to the National Voters' Study (very reliable), the youth vote (18-24) was as follows in the Netherlands in 2017. The yellow thing is the percentage of the vote a party received among young voters, but because of the low N for young voters the margin of error is relatively high, reflected by the long bars. The black thing is the percentage these parties received in total.

Important to take into account the turnout gap here: with a national turnout percentage of 82%, turnout among lower educated youth (18-24) was 59%, while turnout among higher educated youth (18-24) was 85% (see here). This means that highly educated, middle-class (and higher) people are much more overrepresented among the 18-24 electorate than among any other age group. If turnout among lower educated young people were higher, the "populist right" share of the vote among young people would surpass the national percentage of 15%.

Any numbers for former Eastern bloc countries? I'd guess the centre right is doing better with young people there. Socialism is considered old man politics there, no?

I remember reading that 80% of young people (not sure about the exact age category) in Hungary had voted Fidesz or Jobbik (70% nationally).

[Oryxslayer]

^ This. Young people arn't really moving from Right->Left, they are moving from the big two/three parties to alternative ones. The reason why this is often seen as a bad thing for the left over the right though is that the right in much of Europe has been stronger in dealing with this youth movement than the left. This puts the Right in the stronger position - a position that allows them to ally with the alternative parties post-election.

[palandio]

[...]
Purely speculative, but I imagine the age profile of Linke voters is quite different depending on which side of the iron curtain you are.

LINKE share in the West (incl. West Berlin):
total: 7.4%
18-24: 9.5%
25-34: 9.9%

LINKE share in the East (incl. East Berlin):
total: 17.8%
18-24: 16.3%
25-34: 15.2%

So, you are completely right, although I would like to add that the LINKE voter profile in the East is changing into the same direction as in the West.

[Source: The pdf linked above, page 108 and 109.]

[Hifly]

All the evidence points that with only the exception of the UK, the traditional centre-left has a much greater existential crisis with young voters in Europe. The centre-left receives, in general, the lowest proportional vote share with young voters compared to other age groups.
In Germany, the substance of the Left's performance among young voters comes from a strong Green Party; Linke and SPD are weakest among this demographic.

That's not really relevant to the point though. The point is that, while SocDem parties are doing badly across Europe, they aren't everywhere (not in the UK or Switzerland, and barely even relevant in France or the Netherlands where the largestleft wing party at the last election did better with younger voters). That is even more so of the broader left, which often does well wherever you look at.

In contrast, so far we only have one country, Portugal, where the traditional centre-right is doing above average with younger voters (the pont of this isn't "oh look at how the left are doign", seeing as in a lot of instances, it is far right parties gaining the most from young voter disillusionment).

@Hifly: Your claims are not completely supported by the representative electoral statistics which for 2017 give:

Party: share of total vote; share of age 18-24 vote; share of 25-34 vote;
CDU: 26.8; 19.9; 21,4;
SPD: 20.5; 18.4; 17.1;
Linke: 9.2; 10.5; 10.9;
Greens: 8.9; 14.6; 11.1;
CSU: 6.2; 5.1; 5.4;
FDP: 10.7; 13.2; 11.4;
AfD: 12.6; 8.0; 12.8;
Others: 5.0; 10.4; 9.8.

So yes, the SPD has problems with the youth vote, but less than CDU/CSU. The Linke on the other hand, is now stronger among the youngest voters than on average, differently from past elections.

Purely speculative, but I imagine the age profile of Linke voters is quite different depending on which side of the iron curtain you are.

Palandio is that an exit poll? That is a rather high estimate for the SPD, and a lower estimate for the Greens compared to the average shares published in general opinion polls. It should be taken in a matter of proportion, the centre-right (Union/FDP) is much stronger than the centre-left in any case so a larger percentage point difference should not be taken at face value.

@OP "The point is that, while SocDem parties are doing badly across Europe, they aren't everywhere".

The fact is, they really are doing badly almost everywhere. You have repeatedly mentioned the UK (where the Labour Party can no longer be described as purely Social Democratic) and Switzerland as exceptions because it's so tricky to find other examples. Ironically, one of these nations is not in the EU, and the other will no longer be an EU member state in a very short period of time.

Consecutive election loss after election loss over the past two years from Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy etc has put the centre-left in Europe in the weakest position its been in for a very long time. And those parties haven't recovered in any of those nations, but from a collective perspective have declined to an overall ever weaker position since.
When was the last time so few nations were were governed by the Centre-Left? The Centre-Right and Centre have consolidated their power at the seat of Government in Europe. 
The Far-Left isn't doing any better; Syriza has collapsed in Greece and Podemos is flailing. There is no other potential for them in Western Europe.

The existential crisis of the centre-left is very real.

[parochial boy]

Stop being disingenuous, the point of this thread was not to claim Social Democratic parties arr doing fine, but to show that if young people are rejecting centre-right parties (a point you haven't refuted) then we are not far away from a crisis of moderate parties as a whole.

We are alrady seeing a situation where centre right parties are struggling to form governments, or blowing set pieces, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands... none of those tell a story of the centre right coasting into government with no trouble.