Are Young Britons Moving Right?
Since the turn of the century or thereabouts, the rule in British politics has been that the young lean Left and the old lean Right. This trend is seen in many countries but is more pronounced in Britain than almost anywhere else.
At the last General Election, the vast majority of young people voted for Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens. According to Focaldata, less than 25% of 18-24 year-olds voted for Reform or the Conservatives. According to Lord Ashcroft, it was 23%. According to YouGov, it was only 17%. And according to Ipsos, it was only 15%.
Are the young now moving Right? That’s what some headlines are claiming.
A recent poll by JL Partners found that 35% of people aged 16-25 intend to vote for Reform or the Conservatives at the next election. This is much higher than the figures from the four post-election polls mentioned above. Interestingly, JL Partners’ finding is driven by support for Reform, which was actually the most popular party among Gen Z men. (Only 10% of 16-25 year olds said they’d vote Conservative, compared to 25% who said they’d vote Reform.)
The Telegraph in particular has been trumpeting Gen Z’s apparent Rightward shift. In early September, it shared a video with the caption, “Young people at the Reform Party Conference explain why Gen Z are ditching the Left”. And later that month came an article titled ‘Britain’s young people aren’t immune to a Right-wing swing’.
So, is Gen Z really “ditching the Left”? JL Partners’ finding is certainly interesting, but one should never put too much weight on a single poll.
To get a more comprehensive picture, I took an average across six recent polls (including the one by JL Partners). Before getting to the results, a brief word about methodology. I excluded polls that did not report results for under-30s. For example, if the youngest age group was 18-34, the poll was excluded. I only included the latest poll from each pollster. And I ignored responses of ‘don’t know’ or ‘wouldn’t vote’. For example, if 14% of young people said they’d vote Reform, but 10% said ‘don’t know’, I multiplied the Reform figure by 100/90.
Results are shown above. Note that for four of the pollsters, the relevant age group is 18-24. For Find Out Now, it is 18-29. And for JL Partners, it is 16-25.
Two broad conclusions can be drawn: young people have moved Right since the last election; but they’ve moved less than suggested by the poll by JL Partners. On average, 27% of young people intend to vote for Reform or the Conservatives. This represents a seven point shift from the last election. (The average of the four post-election polls mentioned at the start is 20%.)
Another observation one could make is that young people are backing Reform in much greater numbers than the Conservatives — to the tune of more than two to one.
Gen Z is clearly not “ditching the Left”. Recent polls show that most young Britons still support Left-wing parties. However, the young have shifted Rightward since the last election, so the situation for the Right isn’t quite as dire as it was back then.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Others have observed – all ages- that it is less a shift to the Right, rather the Left has shifted further Left, and in fact those who have apparently shifted Right, have hardly moved.
Young people have never actually experienced Leftist Government, just been fed the Utopian Socialist theory. Well they have now, and the reality is not like the theory.
I suspect that events in the US – Trump MAGA and Charlie Kirk and other Right-wing like Joe Rogan influencers have reached British young people via social media which is why the Establishment is exercised with restricting their access.
Reform UK is the first tangibly different political Party the young have encountered. The young are less reserved when it comes to change, more likely to be early adopters, give it a go.
Yes I can see why young people would be more tempted to try something new – but that doesn’t explain why ANY of them would vote Conservative?!
Perhaps the Conservative vote is explained by JXB’s quoted observation that there has been a leftward shift in politics generally? The last Conservative government felt more like a left-leaning centrist party than the Conservatives of old. Perhaps they’ve picked up some moderate youngsters in the process?
In the past, when I was in that age group, I voted Tory in the 1979 GE, soon after the “winter of discontent”, but not long after I became ab active member of the SDP for a while, and was a Parish Councillor under that name. However, I dropped out when the merger with the Licerals occurred, leading to the LibDems.
Having experienced the “winter of discontent” in the Edinburgh Pentlands constituency under the Callaghan government, I wasn’t content with Labour at the time, so I voted for Malcolm Rifkind.
The article says a majority of the younger generation voted for left parties. I doubt it. I suspect a majority did not vote at all.
A significant proportion of the younger generation are living in short-term accommodation: bedsits/shared housing/student accommodation.
I expect a large number aren’t even registered to vote where they are currently living.
Well the politicians of the past 30 years or so have wrecked just about all that is possible to wreck so trying something new seems about the only option remaining.
Only the brain dead would want to continue with a project that has clearly failed, the same goes for the rest of Europe.
Well, whatever happens, the future is always in the hands of the children.
Hard to tell who is churning out bigger lies, politicians or pollsters. This case proves that the latter do, and I won’t be surprised if their next survey finds that young people are glued on the BBC and Sky News, and never heard of TikTok, X, Bluesky or Reddit. Any person who deals with youngsters knows they ignore “traditional” media, very few bother to vote and overall they have total contempt for politicians.
On that last point we are 100% aligned…
One further observation: polls are inaccurate.