Brexit.

Kara Spengler

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Prisoner Farage finally wants to escape the EU prison:

BoJo praises the "vastly more democratic parliament", due to more females and minorities being part of it; wants to leave the EU by 31st of January 2020:
Maybe we need to test the escape proofness of that prison? Toss BoJo and donnie in it and throw away the key.
 
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Luisa Land

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Frans Timmermanns is Vice-president of the EU-Commission:
the "love-letter" he writes to Britain ends
"You have decided to leave. It breaks my heart, but I respect that decision. You were in two minds about it, like you have always been in two minds about the EU. I wish you had stuck to that attitude, it served you well and it kept all of us in better shape. Was it necessary to force the issue? Not at all. But you did. And the sad thing is, I see it is hurting you. Because the two minds will still be there, even after you have left. In the process so much unnecessary damage has been done to you, and all of us. And I fear more will follow.


Truth be told, I felt deeply hurt when you decided to leave. Three years later I am just sad that a member of our family wants to sever our ties. But at the same time I find comfort in the thought that family ties can never really be severed. We’re not going away and you will always be welcome to come back."
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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This diagram by Yougov on the GE results in December clearly shows the massive gap between the generations. The older people do get, the more likely they voted for the Tories, the younger people are the more likely they voted Labour. Since the younger generations are the minority this is what made Johnson's victory possible.

This trend without doubt is a big problem for the Tories, if it should continue, because it means that when their old voting base dies not many new voters will come to replace them.

Surprisingly the LibDems are more or less the same percentage in all age brackets, and starting with the >= 40 years age bracket Labour lost its majority appeal and handed it over to the Tories.



And here's the demography of the UK in 2017:

 
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Innula Zenovka

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This diagram by Yougov on the GE results in December clearly shows the massive gap between the generations. The older people do get, the more likely they voted for the Tories, the younger people are the more likely they voted Labour. Since the younger generations are the minority this is what made Johnson's victory possible.

This trend without doubt is a big problem for the Tories, if it should continue, because it means that when their old voting base dies not many new voters will come to replace them.

Surprisingly the LibDems are more or less the same percentage in all age brackets, and starting with the >= 40 years age bracket Labour lost its majority appeal and handed it over to the Tories.



And here's the demography of the UK in 2017:

My problem with this kind of analysis is that I suspect we need some kind of longitudinal study to make sense of the figures.

That is, I would be interested to know what were the political views of the over-40s when they themselves were in their 20s and 30s.

I would also be interested to know how -- if at all -- these figures have been corrected for possible variables, since it seems to me not unlikely that factors other than age, such as personal income, family commitments, home ownership and available equity, pension arrangements, and so forth, probably also have something to do with voting preferences.
 
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Bartholomew Gallacher

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My problem with this kind of analysis is that I suspect we need some kind of longitudinal study to make sense of the figures.
YouGov also posted a longer PDF about it, which contains school degrees, personal income and such. Anyway the big picture is quite obvious: the support base for the Tories is dieing away at the moment. So unless Tory starts to reinvent themselves they are going to face some problems later in this century, becoming marginal.
 

Innula Zenovka

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YouGov also posted a longer PDF about it, which contains school degrees, personal income and such. Anyway the big picture is quite obvious: the support base for the Tories is dieing away at the moment. So unless Tory starts to reinvent themselves they are going to face some problems later in this century, becoming marginal.
According to the YouGov summary,
In the EU referendum and again in 2017 age was a new dividing line in British politics. The data indicates that little has changed on this front over the past two years, with Labour still winning a majority of younger voters and the Conservatives miles ahead among older Britons.

In fact, for every 10 years older a voter is, their chance of voting Tory increases by around nine points, and the chance of them voting Labour decreases by eight points.

The tipping point - the age at which a voter is more likely to have voted Conservative than Labour - is now 39, down from 47 at the last election.
The UK's population is aging; according to the Office of National Statistics,
Like many other countries, the UK’s age structure is shifting towards later ages. By 2050, it is projected that one in four people in the UK will be aged 65 years and over – an increase from approximately one in five in 2018. This is the result of the combination of declining fertility rates and people living longer. While for some living longer may be a cause for celebration, the ageing population has implications on several policy areas.

The UK’s age structure is determined by trends in fertility and mortality. Generally, both fertility and mortality rates have been declining in the UK. Thus, with less to counterbalance the living longer dynamic, the overall age structure of the UK has tipped further towards the later-life age groups.

According to projections, the population share of later-life age groups is set to increase further in future years too. By 2041, the 1960s baby boomers will have progressed into their 70s and 80s, and by 2068 there could be an additional 8.2 million people aged 65 years and over in the UK – a population roughly the size of present-day London. This would take the UK’s 65 years and over age group to 20.4 million people, accounting for 26.4% of the projected population.
In 1998, around one in six people were 65 years and over (15.9%), this increased to one in every five people in 2018 (18.3%) and is projected to reach around one in every four people (24.2%) by 2038.

Comparatively, an estimated 20.5% of the population were under 16 years old in 1998, decreasing to 19.0% in 2018 and is projected to decline to 17.4% by 2038. In 1998, 63.6% of the population were aged 16 to 64 years old, down to 62.7% in 2018 and projected to decline to 58.4% in 2038.

That seems to me to suggest that, at least for the next 30 or 40 years, at least, the demographics favour the Conservatives rather than Labour -- that is, as younger voters age, the more likely they are to vote Conservative, and the proportion of the population likely -- because of age -- to vote Conservative is going to continue to increase for the foreseeable future.

Unless something completely unexpected happens, I don't see how that's anything other than good news for the Conservatives and bad news for Labour, at least for the foreseeable future.
 

OrinB

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It is more than frustrating that the ultimately capitalist values that Tory governments represent and encourage are more relevant to you as you age. The types of funds keeping you are largely based on stock market and government bonds which tend to be massively assisted by those conservative policies.

It's more than ironic that those same policies tend to penalise younger voters who are more effected when these policies are manipulated to increase base rates and inflation markers which are the bases for student loan interest rates and repayment terms etc.
 
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Innula Zenovka

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It is more than frustrating that the ultimately capitalist values that Tory governments represent and encourage are more relevant to you as you age. The types of funds keeping you are largely based on stock market and government bonds which tend to be massively assisted by those conservative policies.

It's more than ironic that those same policies tend to penalise younger voters who are more effected when these policies are manipulated to increase base rates and inflation markers which are the bases for student loan interest rates and repayment terms etc.
Generally, though, low interest rates are thought to help the stock market, since they make investing your money in government bonds and interest-bearing accounts a less attractive proposition than investing it in shares.

I'd keep an eye on house prices and home ownership rates myself, since I suspect they play a large role in people's concerns and voting decisions -- that is, at the moment, the older you are, the more likely you are to own your home outright or to spend a lower proportion of your income on servicing the mortgage than are younger people.

However, if that changes, either because younger voters don't get established on the property ladder or because -- for whatever reason -- house prices start to fall, then that might well change the association between age and voting behaviour.

That's just speculation, obviously, but I suspect that biological age alone is not the only explanation for changes in voting behaviour as people age over time.
 

Bartholomew Gallacher

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Still the question remains, if

a) the now young people tend to vote more likely for the Tories as they get older or
b) they will not.

In my opinion the Tories are a cohort phenomenon at the moment, because the voting behaviour from the younger voters is totally different compared to the older generations and so far there is not much on the plate at the moment which might change that opinion of most young voters.

What's the reason for my opinion? We've got the same phenomenon in Germany with the conservative C parties, which shows the same generational divide. And so far since years as young people get older they stick to the Green party/left wing spectrum mostly, but never conservative.
 
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Innula Zenovka

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Still the question remains, if

a) the now young people tend to vote more likely for the Tories as they get older or
b) they will not.

In my opinion the Tories are a cohort phenomenon at the moment, because the voting behaviour from the younger voters is totally different compared to the older generations and so far there is not much on the plate at the moment which might change that opinion of most young voters.

What's the reason for my opinion? We've got the same phenomenon in Germany with the conservative C parties, which shows the same generational divide. And so far since years as young people get older they stick to the Green party/left wing spectrum mostly, but never conservative.
Quite possibly so, but the details I've been able to find of voting behaviour in the UK broken down by age suggest that British voters' behaviour is rather different from that of German ones.


You will also have noticed that the commentary to the YouGov poll says "The tipping point - the age at which a voter is more likely to have voted Conservative than Labour - is now 39, down from 47 at the [2015] election" -- that is, that in just two years, the voting behaviour of 39- to 46-year-olds shifted significantly in favour of the Conservatives.

I'd love to believe you are correct but, to my mind, without better evidence to support the belief it would be foolish in the extreme for Labour to rely on their younger supporters remaining loyal as they grow older.
 
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