Like counterparts around the world, Canada’s youth are struggling, victims of a weak economy and a rising cost of living crisis. Whereas boomers rode an unprecedented wave of prosperity and higher living standards, younger Canadians, particularly those under 30, are now more pessimistic about the future than older generations.
These realities suggest severe consequences for the rest of us, and for our future. Younger voters were once seen as the driver of a progressive takeover of all institutions. But today younger voters are, if anything, headed in different directions, with some, notably single women, headed to the left while men, in almost all countries, moving decisively to the right.
In Canada, for example, the youth vote is trending towards the Conservatives. Twice as many voters under 35 think Trudeau has hurt their generation more than helped them; the younger the voter the more negative they tend to be. Two in five, notes a Fraser Institute study, feel pessimistic about the federal government compared to less than eight per cent who have confidence in the current national regime.
In the U.S. as well the percentage of young voters identifying as Republicans has been on the upswing since 2016. This year Donald Trump has gained ground over his weak 2020 showing. It is too early to tell how much the substitution of Kamala Harris for the doddering Joe Biden could weaken this trend. In Europe as much as one-third to two-fifths of young people support parties — and views of immigration climate polices — often characterized as far right.
Even in the recent British elections, Labour lost ground among younger voters, barely breaking two fifths while Reform quadrupled its share. Although much is made of young people’s embrace of Hamas and the terrorist-friendly progressives, U.S. poll data shows that economic factors and alienation from current institutions are likely to be far bigger factors in how they vote. In particular, the rightward shift comes from people without college degrees who make up roughly two thirds of young people across OECD countries.
Read the rest of this piece at National Post.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Photo: Chris Devers Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
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