What is political leaning of younger people in your country?

14 comments

1. Definitely liberal-leaning. Economically generally centrist. Socially, young people are much more likely to hold the sort of do whatever you want as long you’re not involving me attitude, which is generally in contrast to older generations, and just more supportive of lgbt, women’s rights, apathetic to drug usage, etc.

   Any idea why are they more conservative in Sweden? Seems to be against the general patterns elsewhere. Is it because of immigration or other issues too?

2. Last [elections ](https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2021-09-26-BT-DE/charts/umfrage-alter/chart_892125.jpg), the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD), the two biggest parties, did terrible with younger people. The Greens and the free market liberals (FDP) did great. It seems there is no swing to the far right.

3. None tbh. They are usually apathetic in terms of politics. The only thing i can say is they are more liberal & progressive compared to the older population but unfortunately they are ignored by the Greek political parties in general.

4. Probably right-leaning. The Socialist party is more stronger in older people and the less educated. The youngest and more educated vote more in the right

   [https://rr.sapo.pt/noticia/politica/2022/02/18/legislativas-2022-mais-velhos-votam-ps-jovens-e-mais-instruidos-preferem-a-direita/272968/](https://rr.sapo.pt/noticia/politica/2022/02/18/legislativas-2022-mais-velhos-votam-ps-jovens-e-mais-instruidos-preferem-a-direita/272968/).

   For example PS had 27% of the vote in the 25- age, but had a 51% in the over 54.

   [https://www.pedro-magalhaes.org/bases-sociais-do-voto-nas-legislativas-de-2022/](https://www.pedro-magalhaes.org/bases-sociais-do-voto-nas-legislativas-de-2022/)

   Here you can see that if only 35- people voted the right would have a confortable majority in parliament.

5. Wealth-seeking. That’s what the youth of Serbia mostly cares about. Either at home or somewhere else. They have political thoughts and they vary **a lot**, but they’d put a stable life above all that (note: this is almost exclusive to young folk).

   Culturally they are right-wing in terms of preserving tradition and all that.

   In Belgrade and Novi Sad there’s a lot of liberal rainbow people.

   I’d say that the average young man in Serbia puts family first, seeks to build a business, pays his taxes in order to benefit from them, isn’t really religious but wants to preserve religious traditions and all that, is culturally conservative but doesn’t care if someone else isn’t. That’s mostly right-wing with left-wing stances on healthcare and schooling.

   There’s lots of exceptions though, obviously. There’s a lot of liberal rainbow folk, there’s even more ultra-conservative orthodox nationalists, there are communists…

   **The political divide of Serbia isn’t left-right. It’s west-east**. Young folk have a much higher pro-Western affiliation as of 2022, but the pro-East folk are getting more radical by the day.

6. Overall probably left-leaning. Definitely way less socially conservative than previous generations, religious attendance has completely collapsed over the last quarter of a century and young Irish people today are very secular, even anti-clerical in a way. Probably not as green-minded as younger people in other parts of Europe but it’s still relevant. They’re also the first generation to really have a multicultural element (immigration into Ireland was rare until the late 90s).

   At the same time they’re probably more nationalist – that is they have a more sympathetic view of republican parties than generations before. They’ve grown up with a peaceful Northern Ireland, after the Good Friday Agreement. So whereas older generations tend to remember the bloodshed and have deep reservations or even hostility towards Sinn Féin, younger people really gravitate towards them, especially with the cost of living/housing crises ongoing. The next government is very likely to be led by Sinn Féin, and a lot of that support is from young people.

7. The German youth vote can be described by two trends: Fragmentation and liberalisation.

   Young people are much more likely to vote for splinter and issue based parties, even those that have no chance of making it past the 5% threshold. Comparatively prominent are the animal protection party and a left libertarian joke party, both of which aren’t represented in the Bundestag.

   Young people are also much more socially liberal as well as better educated (which really skews the vote here as young people without a university degree are least likely to go to the ballot). This has changed the relationships *within* the right and left camp a lot. For under 25 year olds, the Social Democrats only got 15% of the youth vote, compared to 23% for the Greens; and the Christian Democrat / Christian Social alliance got an abysmal 10%, while the liberal Free Democrats received an outstanding 21%. The far right AfD received the least share among all age cohorts with young voters under 25 and the far left Linke got almost twice the share as among the general population.

   Within the left, the shift can be largely explained by a shift in education patterns. If you have a university degree, you vote Green; if not, Social Democrat. Within the right, things aren’t all that clear cut. My interpretation is that there has been a general shift away from a focus on traditional values and structures towards a more hedonistic individualism that focuses on personal wealth, status and achievement, but also couldn’t care less about a conservatism that tries to impose constraints on your personal life, be it a moralist insistence on conservative “values” or a utilitarian concept of collective responsibility (managing the economy, doing covid lockdowns). They are the children of the neoliberal consensus of the turn of the century, after all.

   Some conservatives really want to have a culture war in Germany, too, but the vast amount of young people are disinterested in or outright hostile to reactionary talking points.

   The (grand)children of muslim Turkish and evangelical Russian immigrants are generally much more conservative than “typical” Germans, but my impression is that they tend not to vote or don’t exist in large enough numbers.

8. The two most popular parties among 15-29-year-olds are The Finns (right wing populist) and The Greens. However, it’s very much divided by gender. The Finns are popular among the young men, and the Greens are popular among young women. Interestingly, these two parties are probably the two parties in our parliament that are furthest apart from each other politically.

9. Most of the young people I know are left leaning culturally, and that even goes for more middle aged people. Only the elderly tend to be more conservative.

   Economically, it’s a mixed bag, and kind of depends on the part of the country (the north tends to be more economically liberal, whereas the south and the Alentejo region are mostly lefties, and quite a few outright communists as well).

10. The far right party Vlaams Belang was the biggest among 18 and 19 year olds for the last elections (2019), although the left wing green party was not far behind and was relatively bigger (compared to their votes across all ages).

    The traditional (and more centrist) parties don’t do very well among young people; they have been struggling in recent years since their voter base is dying off.

11. Basically, here in Italy youger people (12-17 years) feeds on their fathers and granpas’ reminiscences of the time politics was divided in Christian Democracy and Communist Party. Even when it’s not clearly stated, in the smaller realities the social relations and interactions between families are still influenced by it. Kids learn at school that WW2 events here were also the fight between fascism and anti-fascism. Then they mix up everything badly and go around telling “I’m fascist” or “I’m communist” based on the positions of their families in the past or what their friends prefer and not understanding shit about the past, the present and what they are even talking about. Then they get the right to vote at 18 and they are led by idealism to vote some crap: right, left, doesn’t matter, they vote what feeds their idealism. In their 20s if we are not unlucky they finally understand that the old ideologies are an undead puppet. Left and right are badly rappresented, but the left realizes and it’s demoralized, while the right is not aware of the freak show they are giving. So youger electors either vote the right because they love it, or they vote the left because they see it as the lesser evil. But let’s see what happens next week. Based on the result I could consider emigration

12. Contrary to a lot of other people posting here, I would say more liberal and left wing. On the right side of the spectrum, the alt-right is winning over the establishment right.

    I think it’s a natural reaction. We have had a right-wing government since 2015, and their heavy-handed attempts at indoctrinating the youth just ended up fuelling the memes. Things like religion classes participation (which in Poland usually just means Catholic propaganda) are falling through the roof.

    This is in contrast to the pre-2015 situation when the nationalist and generally right-wing views were seen as “anti-System” and thus quite trendy among high-schoolers.

13. That’s what happens when the old people try to be hip and cool and “woke” by copying the youth. The youth goes in opposition just for the sake of being different.

    Corollary: Don’t do that as an old person. Be conservative.

14. In Britain it’s similar. Usually the youth are left leaning but since Brexit, Covid I’ve noticed more have right leaning and conservative views.

    A small element of the youth are also buying into the Rogan podcast conspiracy shit and think Boris Johnson is alright because he’s funny….

    I’d say the millennials are more left and Gen Z can be a mix of left, centre and right.