Are Conservative voters literally ‘dying out’? | ITV News
https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-20/are-conservative-voters-literally-dying-out
by qwerty_1965
Are Conservative voters literally ‘dying out’? | ITV News
https://www.itv.com/news/2024-06-20/are-conservative-voters-literally-dying-out
by qwerty_1965
32 comments
Quote
“Ten years ago, the average age of a Conservative voter was 52, compared to 48 for those supporting Labour – quite a small difference.
But over the past decade, the average age of a Conservative voter has risen to 62, while the average age of Labour voters has barely changed.
As ITV’s election analyst Jane Green points out, this poses an existential threat to the Tories, whose voters are now older than ever before.
“Older voters are leaving the electorate – they are literally dying – in higher numbers. And so the Conservative Party has to replace its vote as its losing voters through that process,” she said.”
And replacing dead old voters with policies which actively repel young people like the idiot national service one won’t help!
Certianly rightwng views aren’t dying out, but what is declining is the WW2/Empire mythos that boomers grew up with.
With their track record in health & social care, the conservatives have been killing off their base even faster
Never forget that in any age group there are supporters of every party.
There are 20 y.o. Tories, 80 year old socialists, 18 y.o. Reform voters and 75 year old greens.
And 10 years of Labour government will shift voters away from them. That’s how it works every time.
Remember that in 2019 the Tories declared Labour was dead, destroyed forever.
The Tories will re-emerge in 10 years.
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What’s interesting is if the last 8 years post referendum will leave a scar
Talk to any boomer about ‘Labour in the 70’s’ and they still go on about it. I wonder if in 2067, old people will have the same ‘can never vote Tory after what they did’ attitude that leaves a permanent dent in them
After this election it will be new improved Tories and voters will gradually go back to them.
The likes of Boris will be consigned to the background or expelled.
Look at Labour, they have had a bit of an overhaul. Comrade Cordyn and the loonies to Stramer.
I predict the new bunch of Tories won’t be the brash uber rich from Eton, etc. More earthy type people (why am I thinking vampires at this moment?).
I would say no, people are just feeling massively disenfranchised by both major parties which is the reason why reform is getting so much traction.
It makes sense because the tories have been squeezing the young to give to the old. In order to stay in power and not to annoy their base they have made cuts to services the young use to benefit the older generation.
Article from 2022
‘Old Britain is landed; pensioners are overwhelmingly likely to own their own home, with 75 per cent mortgage-free. Old Britain does not work; pensioners are, by definition, retired. In short, Old Britain is insulated from the real economy. Homeownership means that changes in rents from a housing shortage are directly beneficial: Old Britain claims more money from property it rents out, and the value of those homes increases. Higher interest rates mean higher returns on its savings, which are often held in cash and annuities.
What matters for its welfare is not whether wages are increasing or the economy is growing, but whether it can extract more or less money from Young Britain through taxes and rents.’
Good luck liberals… I would select a young dude ( handsome or beautiful ) as the new leader of liberal party. Time is the tiktok age. Use it.
I’ve always been slightly dubious of the argument that people en masse switch from left wing parties to right wing as they age.
It seems more likely to me that people who grew up during times when a government was floundering would be less likely to want to vote for them, and would vote for their opposition as a result, and then over time that person would carry on voting the same way (unless something drastic happened like what we’re currently seeing with the previously slow but now rapid death of the Tories).
Or vice versa if you grew up during a time of good government you’d probably want to keep voting for them.
There’ll always be people who “switch sides” of course, but when you hear people saying that most of the 60-70 year olds they know are voting Tory, those people would have been in their 20s and 30s during the Winter of Discontent.
Personally most of the 30-40 year olds I know all vote Labour or Lib Dem (locally and online), which seems to fit what I’m saying as we were kids/young teens when John Major led the previously worst government of our lifetimes.
Therefore it doesn’t surprise me at all to hear that Tory voters are dying out – if you were middle aged during Thatcher’s run, by now you’re going to be elderly.
Slowly but surely, the Boomerati are finding themselves backed into a corner.
Yeah I think the younger generations will benefit the most by this Tory die-out.
Us millennials have been eating shit from every single possible direction, Thatcher’s housing policy, leaving our parents generationally richer, whilst we can’t afford a house. 2008 recession dickslap. Brexit dickslap. Covid Dickslap. And another mini-recession and cost of living crisis.
For the millennial it’s been a conveyor belt of dickslaps at the hand of the right wings. When our parents die, there will be no more Tory party.
I honestly don’t think most of them give a fuck. They’ve had the time in charge and made a fortune from it.
The latest news is that Johnson is being lined-up for a comeback to reunite the right. I’m not sure he’s quite the draw he was 5 years ago.
Maybe this is why the latest government wouldn’t discuss euthenasia. They don’t want more of their base “leaving the electorate” early.
I am sure that the political pendulum will swing back their way eventually. But they have a hard job. Their policies have almost exclusively awarded relatively well-off boomers, who are slowly but surely dying out, and they have made little effort to expand their offer outside of this group because it has not been electorally advantageous to. Boomers have consistently voted throughout their lives, whereas the young haven’t.
Now Millenials and Gen-z are the largest voting block in the electorate, to the point that even with a relatively poor turn out they can now finally overturn the Boomer vote. And the Conservatives are screwed.
The best thing to happen to the Tories was Blair getting in creating enough wealth in the country it mean there were plenty of Tory voters for years to come. The Tories will come back once labour do it again.
Maybe part of the problem is that people used to become more conservative as they aged as their wealth increased, are we at a stage where this no longer happens?
If people remain as poor in mid or old age as they were in their youth why in the hell would they consider becoming conservative?
[Boris Johnson favoured ‘older people accepting their fate’, Covid inquiry hears](https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/31/boris-johnson-favoured-older-people-accepting-their-fate-covid-inquiry-hears)
I’m in my 50s and have more or less always voted conservative because I thought they were the party of economic prudence and opportunity. Brexit has shattered that illusion and I’ll never vote Tory again. I won’t vote Labour either because they remain economically incompetent idealists. So I didn’t die, Brexit killed them instead.
As long as immigration is kept at an acceptable level the UK should follow the trend Europe is following rather than the Anglosphere trend
Yes. Along with people still drinking the brexit juice.
It’s almost as if making financial security and home ownership a difficulty for younger people is stopping them from becoming more conservative with age.
If they get back in power they better build more council houses and flats to give away.
Depends what kind of Conservative, if you’re thinking Tories? absolutely. But there are other types of Conservatives in other age groups.
Let’s hope Jacob Reese Moog also dies out, very quickly
Conservatism is about preserving wealth.
Younger generations have been denied the opportunity for wealth.
This is exactly what I’d expect.
They fucked themselves even more by introducing such austere measures that life expectancy went down. Killing your own base with your lack of care has consequences, who knew!
I guess some Gen Xers, myself included, remember Thatcher. We’re in our fifties now – there’s no way I’d vote for them, which isn’t to say I’d always vote Labour….
Funnily enough During my the Blair Brown years, younger people became more right wing.
So essentially when a party is in power, younger people move away from that political ideology.
As we’ve not had a labour leader not called Tony Blair in power since 1979 it’s not surprise the young are increasingly left wing.
Well, in a way, yes. The party is collapsing before our eyes.