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

[EPG]

The current mainstream centre-right is chasing its pensioner demographic who remember the USSR. There is usually an alternative centrist or CR party without hang-ups about gay marriage etc., and of course an alternative CR or right party that is anti-immigrant.

Young people also have less money. 18-25 is also a really small voter demographic in most of Europe, and many are still in education or wandering around Europe in basic jobs.

Generally once people have kids, they become much less interested in grand risky ideas to remake society as a whole, and more interested in threats to their children and family right now. It's clear how this helps mainstream CR to close the youth gap (including versus anti-immigrant parties). Not so much the PS.

[EPG]

The difference between how young people vote in the Anglo-sphere vs Continental Europe, with the former voting more left and the latter voting more right is something I have thought about myself, does anybody have any idea as to why this gap exists, is it more that left wing parties in the UK, US, Australia etc. are better at appealing to young voters then those in continental Europe or is it that right wing parties in continental Europe are better at appealing to voters then right wing parties in the Anglo-Sphere.

Just to throw out some ideas about UK/USA/Aus. Above all it's hard to ignore the forced-choice electoral system, as it encourages pursuit of big broad vote blocs who are spread across the country. It also seems to force centre-left parties closer to the centre, most of the time. The economic importance of housing equity in wealth. Immigration, making the labour supply of young people very competitive, may have economic impacts too.

[EPG]

As for the "younger voters move to establishment parties as they get jobs/houses", that hasn't necessarily always been the case (see Germany), and the counter argument could run that as more and more people become "stuck" in precarious jobs and excluded from home ownership might mean they keep choosing radical options. But that is pure speculation.

etc. I quote the most interesting part to me. It's a good question about Macron. I think we have to accept that the under-25 demographic in most of continental Europe finds anti-foreigner politics very appealing.

Nothing in comparative politics is necessarily always the case, but mostly people with families and property become less radical, and older people become less radical, radical political positions are usually under-served by parties, and the parties that do serve those positions are less able to mobilise votes nationally. I wonder if any of these is particularly controversial, 90% of the time. IOW, you would expect to see radical parties and non-voters with a lot of inter-movement, if you could really observe it (Which is hard).

So, Germany is quite exceptional because they added a Communist dictatorship to their country in the middle of all these time series. I don't know if quite the same secular decline in CDU votes happened in the West.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if the young people without secure jobs or housing tenures remained radical for the duration of that period.

Double however, is that, the last phenomenon is not going to continue until they're, like, 50. This job precarity phenomenon has been going way down in European countries where the economy improved. The main problem with housing is what young person under 30 wants to live 5km outside a minor city, or 15km outside major cities, yet that's where the post-war housing is (often 1 old person with 2-3 bedrooms).