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.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[parochial boy]

Incidentally, one of the things that inspired me to start this thread was the fact that Macron did surprisingly averagely with younger voters in France - and you would have thought his "modern" image + the mass desertion of Fillon by younger voters would have benefitted him more. Instead, Mélenchon over performed massively, and Macron barely beat Le Pen.

I would be careful of generalising "Anglosphere" countries too, the UK's political environment is still more "European" in nature than it is American.

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.

Does anyone know if there has ever been much research into how people who abstain in their youth vote later on in life? Youth turnout has almost always been lower, so there are a lot of people to whom this would apply. In Switzerland, the "didn't vote last time" demographic went strongly UDC (38%), and the traditional Centre-right parties (PLR and PDC) underperformed the most, which seems reasonable as an assumption.