Sunday, March 1, 2020

Young Voters: Generation Divide or Class Divide?


There was a time when young people tended to vote similarly to their parents, as if political viewpoints could be inherited.  That is no longer the case.  Those who analyze voting patterns tend to bin people into age groups suggesting diversions from past behavior are a generational thing.  Successive generations will reach political adulthood experiencing different economic and social conditions which political scientists tell us will affect their political leanings for the remainder of their lives.  To observe that different age groups are voting differently is interesting, but not explanatory.  Why that is so is what we need to know.  William Davies provided a fascinating article for the London Review of Books titled Bloody Furious that provides some necessary insight.  Davies was reviewing a book by Keir Milburn titled Generation Left (Radical Futures).  The conclusion to be drawn from these sources is that the generational differences are best understood as a traditional class divide with the have-nots opposing the haves.  The analyses focus on the British issue of Brexit and the recent election results, but the age-group voting trends in the US seem remarkably similar.  It would be wise to consider the British issues and outcomes as we head into our nominating and election period.

Davies provides background on the British voting data.

“In the 2016 referendum, 64 per cent of people over the age of 65 voted Leave, compared to 29 per cent of those under the age of 25. In the 2017 general election, 69 per cent of those over the age of 70 voted for the Conservative Party, compared to 21 per cent under the age of 25. The probability that an individual voted Conservative in that election increased by 9 per cent for each additional ten years. Boris Johnson was appointed Tory leader (and hence prime minister) in summer 2019 by Conservative Party members whose average age was 57. His subsequent election victory wasn’t due to any improvement in his party’s standing among the young, but because there was a drift of Labour voters (including young ones) towards smaller parties. Other than that, the electoral demographics were identical to those of 2017.”

“If you’re over the age of 50, the odds are that you’re happy with how it’s all worked out. If you’re under the age of 50, the odds are that you’re not, and if you’re under the age of 30, you may well be bloody furious.”

The relevant generational divide in the US resides in the Democratic Party where “moderate” candidates are contending against more “radical” candidates.  Joe Biden represents the moderate wing, while Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are considered to be in the radical category.  Eric Levits provided some relevant data in an article titled This One Chart Explains Why the Kids Back Bernie. 

“Blue America’s gaping chasm of a generation gap has been a — if not the — defining feature of the Democratic primary race thus far. An Economist/YouGov poll released this week found that 60 percent of Democrats younger than 30 support either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren; among those 65 and older, the progressive candidates’ combined total was 27 percent. Before the Vermont senator’s strong showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, surveys showed an even wider age divide: In late January, Quinnipiac had Joe Biden leading the field nationally — even as he trailed Bernie Sanders among voters 35 and younger by a margin of 53 to 3 percent. Exit polls from New Hampshire affirmed this generational split, with Sanders winning 47 percent of voters 18 to 29, but just 15 percent of those over 65.”

Levits’ focus is on the decline in return on investment for most from higher education.  The British viewpoint recognizes that and a few other generational issues and arrives at a more convincing explanation, one that seems just as true for the US.

What of material interests? The suspicion that baby boomers – generally defined as those born between 1945 and 1964 – have benefited disproportionately from postwar economic policymaking, both in its redistributive Keynesian phase and its subsequent neoliberal phase, has been growing for many years. Ironically it was a Conservative politician, David Willetts, who – in his 2010 book The Pinch – first assembled the evidence that a generational land grab had occurred in the UK, at the expense of the boomers’ children and grandchildren. The boomers enjoyed a childhood and early adulthood of generous public spending, along with free university tuition, abundant cheap property, then – for those who acquired assets during the 1970s and 1980s – growing house prices, share prices and pension pots.”

“The fact that older people vote in far higher numbers than the young has caused politicians to queue up to defend the interests of older generations: protecting the state pension from cuts, boosting the NHS, cutting capital gains tax and coming up with goodies such as free television licences for the over-75s. Of course statistical trends don’t reflect universal experience, and pensioner poverty is a serious problem, but there are advantages that the majority of older people enjoy: 73 per cent of those aged between 65 and 74 own their own home, for instance, compared to less than 5 per cent of under-35s. Novel monetary policies such as quantitative easing, which has contributed to a further rise in asset prices since 2009, have disproportionately benefited baby-boomers.”

The inability to enter the housing market is indicated as a particularly “radicalizing” factor for the young.

“The intergenerational conflict over housing is becoming more entrenched as cities around the world become less affordable. In Hong Kong, more than half of people in their late twenties and early thirties are living with their parents – an under-recognised factor in the political discontents of that generation. In the UK, Corbynism took deepest root in the cities and university towns in which housing was most expensive. The Resolution Foundation calculates that the average millennial will spend £44,000 more on rent in their twenties than a baby boomer did. But even among older voters, the appeal of the Conservative Party doesn’t extend beyond the ranks of owner-occupiers: someone who rents in their sixties is no more likely to vote Conservative than someone who rents in their thirties.”

A political generation is better defined by the circumstances a cohort has experienced than by chronology.  And the current young shared quite an experience in the recent Great Recession.  The lesson they seem to have learned is that no one is looking out for them, so they better take matters into their own hands.

“This is​ the premise of Keir Milburn’s Generation Left. In his account, the most significant political event of recent times was the financial crisis of 2008. It was 2008 that ‘crystallised and accelerated the ongoing generational divide in life chances’, breaking a central ideological pillar of postwar capitalism – namely, that a typical individual should enjoy greater prosperity than their parents.”

“The fallout from 2008 included a series of political decisions that had scant impact on asset owners and retirees, but fell heavily on the young. House prices and managerial salaries quickly recovered their upward momentum, while most wages slumped for the longest period since the industrial revolution.”

“Crucially, for the UK, the coalition government announced in late 2010 that university tuition fees would increase to as much as £9000 a year. This prompted two months of protests and university occupations, including the storming of the Conservative Party’s campaign headquarters at Millbank Tower. The Millbank occupation provided the ‘moment of excess’ that Milburn sees as decisive in the formation of new political movements and subjectivities, forcing ‘observers to make a decision on whether to align themselves with the old or the new space of possibility’.”

The protests in the UK were an example of activism that was matched in other places, including the US.

“In 2011 alone, protests included the Arab Spring, riots in several British cities, the emergence of the ‘Indignados’ in Spanish squares and the Occupy movement in Zuccotti Park.”

Milburn believes what the young desire is a reimagining of the social contract that would qualify as a “revolution.”

“…given sufficient political power, Generation Left could ‘reinvent adulthood’, channelling the passions of 2011 into a new policy platform that would confer economic security as a matter of citizenship rather than a consequence of asset ownership.”

The voting patterns are consistent with the youth voting as a class, or, if one prefers, a special interest group.  And what they want is what the so-called radicals like Sanders and Warren are offering.  The media and the Democratic elites don’t seem to understand this.  Why would any of those who feel dispossessed be satisfied with being told the status quo isn’t so bad, things will get better someday.  That is the message “moderates” like Biden are sending.

Bernie Sanders associates the word revolution with his set of policies, but they are merely copies of policies that already exist in highly successful countries such as those of Scandinavia.  There is nothing radical about them.  The powers that be in the Democratic Party have the right to be unhappy with Bernie as their nominee, but they would be wise to come to terms with his policies and their popularity with an important constituency.  They should start by finally understanding why Sanders is so popular with the young.  They should recognize that a society that produces a situation in which younger people feel that it will be impossible for them to do as well economically as their parents is a society in peril.  Ideally, one should have relatively equal levels of economic security across generations.  If economic security falls for the current generation, what is the trend for the next?  Continuing along this path will lead to true revolution—with bodies lying in the streets.


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